And because she was ...

 

When she was a little girl

they told her she was beautiful

but it had no meaning

in her world of bicycles

and pigtails

and adventures in make-believe.

Later, she hoped she was beautiful

as boys started taking notice

of her friends

and phones rang for

Saturday night dates.

She felt beautiful on her wedding day,

hopeful with her

new life partner by her side

but, later,

when her children called

her beautiful,

she was often exhausted,

her hair messily tied back,

no make up,

wide in the waist

where it used to be narrow;

she just couldn't take it in.

Over the years, as she tried,

in fits and starts,

to look beautiful,

she found other things

to take priority,

like bills

and meals,

as she and her life partner

worked hard

to make a family,

to make ends meet,

to make children into adults,

to make a life.

Now,

she sat.

Alone.

Her children grown,

her partner flown,

and she couldn't remember

the last time

she was called beautiful.

But she was.

It was in every line on her face,

in the strength of her arthritic hands,

the ampleness that had

a million hugs imprinted

on its very skin,

and in the jiggly thighs and

thickened ankles

that had run her race for her.

She had lived her life with a loving

and generous heart,

had wrapped her arms

around so many to

to give them comfort and peace.

Her ears had

heard both terrible news

and lovely songs,

and her eyes

had brimmed with,

oh, so many tears,

they were now bright

even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.

And because she was,

she was made beautiful.

Author: Suzanne Reynolds, © 2019

Photo credit: Nina Djerff

Model: Marit Rannveig Haslestad

This came up in my Facebook Memories from last year, and I just had to share it with you. I hope you like it as much as I do. 💖

Sue xx

Time Out, Coffee ... and Don't Get Arrested

 

Gosh I'm feeling like a time out at the moment.

Inspiration has temporarily dried up leaving me feeling very strange.  I'm halfway through three books and not that inspired to finish any of them.  I should be planning out next weeks rations but haven't even started yet.  

I have hoovered.  😃

But perhaps I'll just wander off and search for a coffee.

Because ...

Sue xx

It's All About the Beans - Part Two

 

Last week I posted on here about my bean shortage and the letter I received from Heinz in response to my politely worded email pointing out their short-changing a nation of bean lovers on a regular basis.  I apologise to any of you who are now obsessively weighing the contents of all your cans to see if you too are being short-changed ... and reading some of your blogs it would appear that you are!!

In response to my 'complaint' ... I was polite, honest I was ... they sent me six pounds worth of vouchers to spend on Heinz/Kraft products.  It didn't take me much looking around at the range of their items in the shops that I have access to, to realise that the best use of the vouchers would actually be on baked beans.

And then when I spotted them this morning as we passed the end of the aisles to go upstairs to the café in Booths for a coffee after my hospital appointment, and they were just £3.50 for four cans ... just I say, that is a lot of money when I am used to buying 28p tins of beans from Aldi !!  I decided over my coffee that I would buy two four packs with my vouchers.

Now as I am living on WWII rations at the moment and beans have to be purchased on the Points system these are going to last me a long time ... possibly into January.  😄

One pound spent = beans for months.  

Thanks for all the lovely comments on the last post.  💖

Sue xx

Just a Proud Great Nana Moment ...

 

We went to see and have a cuddle of our new great grandson Finley-James on Sunday morning.

Here with his Mum, his big brother and Great Grandad Alan reading a story, with Mason supplying all the sound effects. 

Time for a cuddle, and in Finley's case time to watch a bit of television while the grown ups all chatted.  And then ...

... time to hand Finley over to Great Grandad Alan who was on feeding duty.  

Finley and Mason's Dad, my grandson Liam, was there but he just had to keep going into the kitchen for business calls, so somehow he managed to miss all the photos!!

A lovely couple of hours of family time, so I thought I would pop the photos on here for posterity.  💖

Sue xx

Weekend Watching

 

My mantra for the weekend.  😊

And here for your delight and entertainment are a few of the YouTube videos that I have really enjoyed this week.

https://youtu.be/28seX-TDUh4?si=VES3SgOyInNKM6_G

Firstly a lovely vegan couple that I've watched for quite a while now,  doing another of their budget vegan food shops.  They are so close to the magic 1000 subscribers at last, so if you enjoy the video please think about subscribing to the channel, it costs you nothing but does really help them

https://youtu.be/58wyfJQCMVg?si=hh3V6asRZc_K1-ix

I watched Farmhouse on Boone this morning, such a relaxing way to start the day this video and a cup of coffee ... and such a beautiful house with it's lovely muted colours.

A little video from Carolyn, who is great for giving me ideas to help with rationing.

https://youtu.be/UmDDhwFZQjo?si=ucxEDzR8uWlb64PT

I think I'll give these ago the next time I run out of bread.

And finally from Grackle ...

https://youtu.be/mRtMR8FAfuE?si=Pxasn1HRJfdEiWts

A bit of a nosey into two hotels in London, the newest and the oldest ... and wow, what a difference in price.  I do love a look around a hotel room and what better way to do it without having to spend on an overnight stay away from home.  

I hope you enjoy these, just something to sit back and enjoy a cup of coffee over.

Sue xx

It's All About the Beans

I have beans on my menu twice this week over on my Getting Ready for Rations on Retirement blog, usually when I am splitting a can of baked beans I upend it for an hour or so before I open it, just so that the sauce distributes evenly throughout the can ... this time I forgot.  So to get an even distribution of beans and sauce I decided to tip it into the pan and then spoon out half.  I thought I might as well get a perfect split so I weighed the pan.

I was pretty shocked really that a good brand such as Heinz is still short-changing it's customers.  I have complained to them once before when I was doing a challenge and had cause to weigh my beans, they sent me a £2 voucher.  I have also complained many years ago to Asda about their Smartprice beans, they were seriously underweight, they too sent me a £2 gift card.

Now I didn't do this for any reward but more because I was really annoyed.  

Branded beans are now quite an expensive thing to buy, these Heinz beans were bought on offer at £3.50 for a four pack, usually they are £1.40 per can each ... obviously I was feeling flush that week whenever it was ... as I'm someone who usually buys the supermarkets basic lines at under 30p a tin this price is astonishing.

Anyway I ate my lunch, half a can of beans on two slices of toast, and then jumped on the computer to send a politely worded message to Heinz via their website.  Just pointing out that as beans are cooked in the cans there should be no room for any discrepancy of weights and if they knew that somehow beans magically lost weight on cooking they should start the process with more weight in the cans and then left it at that.

On the way to Mum's yesterday, with the car boot loaded up with Alan's carpet cleaner ready to clean Mum's carpets we were chatting away about all sorts of things and I mentioned the low weight of my beans and of the previous cans from this batch and Alan started doing the maths, as only an engineer would.  He worked out that if they are making millions of cans of beans per year and a good percentage of them are actually underweight the company is making huge profits from selling 'missing beans'.

Yes, we often have these sort of conversations!!  😄

And this was where this blog post was going to end, but ...

... I have just received this letter.

I only contacted them on Tuesday, so this is very quick work on their part.  I am now the proud owner of two £3 vouchers, I didn't do any of this for that but nevertheless I am happy to have them.

The big questions is now do I buy more beans with my vouchers?

Checking the prices of the Heinz beans and Sainsbury's own brand beans as I was a few minutes ago to get things right for this post, has thrown up that the packs of six Heinz beans are currently on offer in Sainsbury's at just £4.75 if you have a Nectar card, I'm tempted, but maybe that's their plan ... get me hooked on Heinz baked beans as I used to be many years ago.  😀

Sue xx

Apologies to Anyone Who Loves the Heat

 For sure.  💚

I love Autumn, and no sooner than I thought it had arrived it left!!

 Only the other week as the days, and especially the nights, started to cool I was dreaming about putting on my winter-weight duvet and snuggling up at night, pulling my warmer jumpers and cardigans out of storage and packing away the lighter Summer coloured t-shirts for another year.  It's a good job I didn't react to my first thought isn't it.  

Last week was a sweaty mess in every sense of the word.  Watering plants to keep them alive was suddenly top priority, well along with trying to keep my little place cool for the dogs and Ginger to escape from the sun.  How Alan managed down South wearing a shirt and suit each day at work I have no idea!

Yes, the nights are drawing in at a fast pace and the darker evenings are a balm to my soul but I need cool, lots of cool at this time of year.  Thank goodness it seems to be cooling down to more Autumnal temperatures this week ... and fingers crossed it stays that way. 

Now all I need to do is go to the car wash and get that Saharan dust that came down in the thundery showers the other day, washed off my car.

Sue xx