Good cooking so far

I am having a great day doing lots of cooking with my new machine.  I'm just taking a little break to have some coffee.  So far I have made a cherry and almond cake, some jam tarts, Irish soda bread and some veg soup. 

Simons welding course was changed from Monday to Tuesday this week and he won't be in until gone 9pm, Saskia doesn't get back from Uni until half past ten, so I have no need to cook a proper dinner.  I am going to have veg soup with warm buttery soda bread.  They can have that too if they are hungry when they get home.  I bet Simon will just eat cake.

Cherry and almond cake.

In between all my cooking whilst waiting for the timer to go off, I have been in and out of the garden doing a bit of a tidy up.  I swept up all the leaves and cut back my hydrangea bush.  I don't know if I have done that correctly.

It looks so sad now.

I dead headed the remaining flowers and cut back my mini rose bush. I still have a few flowers but I don't expect they will last much longer.  It is starting to look bleak now.  I hate this time of year.  I am most definitely a warm weather girl. 

Some of my remaining flowers.

It is really looking bleak, even my doggie looks sad.

Oh dear, some of the bulbs that I planted ready for spring have begun to come up.  They will probably die with the first hard frost.  They are tulips and daffodil bulbs.  Strange how one pot has grown and the other one next to it hasn't.

I filled up my bird feeders and took these photos of the nest boxes Sam made me for my birthday.  I really hope they use them next spring.  I wanted to use these for this weeks Picture Perfect theme of home made, but it's a bit late now.

See the one up there in the corner.  Look at the grain on the wood.  Sam made a really good job of these.

This one is on the shed, and I'm not sure it's a real good place but we didn't really have anywhere else.  Right, I have just about drunk my coffee, so I am going to go and tidy my kitchen a bit and see what else i would like to make.  I want to try out the processor.  Probably back later!