It was sunny for a bit.

So we went to the park.

And went on the pedalo boats. That’s Jay letting me do all the hard work ;)

So maybe Jay was the one doing all the hard work…

 

That’s Lewis, Callum and Tim, getting soaked by the water fountains.

And that’s Jay again, in the Chinese garden.
And that’s all the photos I took because right after I took this shot, one of the guys behind Jay came over and asked if he could have “just one photograph with her”, so we walked away.

Photo dump.

I’ve been crazy busy lately.  The day after I handed in my dissertation, I started working full time in a bar-restaurant, and I feel like I haven’t sat down since.  I’m currently on a split shift, and realised my poor blog has been seriously neglected. So while I soak my feet in a basin of hot water, here are some of my recent Instagrams :)

Making apple sauce & veggie fajita prep.

Homemade salsa & vine tomatoes.

Making a strawberry milkshake & the first sun in weeks.

Getting my vitamins the fun way & juice in a jar.

Cocktails after work & baking lemon slices.

Raspberries & the finished lemon slices.

Sewing burp cloths for some friends who had babies recently.

My pin cushion & a birthday present for my little sister.

Summer flowers & my post-work, pre-bed snack.

Follow me on Instagram: @njmarcus
As seen above, the majority of my uploads are photos of food.  An accurate reflection of my spare time, I feel.
See you soon!

As promised.

Me and my dissertation.
That’s it, uni is over…

Two beautiful things.

Number one…

My completed dissertation.  (Not all pages fit in the screenshot)
Not yet printed or bound, but it’s finished.  Phew.
(You know I will share a photo of it once it’s ready to submit, with me grinning in the background)

Number two…

Finally, brighter skies, after days and days of rain.

Peach Cobbler (Recipe)

I’ll start this post off with a confession.
I have no idea what peach cobbler is.
I’ve heard of it a few times, and always think it sounds like it would be nice, but I’ve never tried to make it, or even find out what exactly it is.
This recipe is basically what I imagine peach cobbler to be like.

1. Tip a can of peaches into a small casserole dish.

2. Weigh out 40g of oats

3. Mix the oats with one tablespoon of flour (doesn’t need to be self-raising, but that’s all I had), and spread evenly over the peaches.

4. Sprinkle over a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a teaspoon of sugar.

5. Bake in a moderate oven for about ten minutes, then mix it all up so that the oaty bits on top get a chance to soak with the lovely peach juice.  Bake for another ten minutes, then it’s probably good to go.

6. Serve it up, and if you are me, take a rubbish photo of it that does no justice at all to how delicious and comforting it is

I think a good scoop of ice cream would be really nice with this.  I had a few spoonfuls of natural yogurt on top of mine, and it was delicious (and more healthy).

~~~

What photo editors have you been using since Picnik shut down?  I’ve been using PicMonkey, which is good, but the filters mainly make my photos look like I’ve Instagrammed them.  I love Instagram, but I don’t want my ‘proper’ photos to look like that, you know?

Note: I have just Googled ‘peach cobbler’ and discovered that it’s pretty much the same idea, only different.  The peaches and cinnamon were right…

 

Uh Huh Her.

We went to see Uh Huh Her in Nottingham on Friday night.
They were a-maz-ing.

At the end of the show, they announced that they’d be signing stuff at the merchandise table on the balcony.  Well, we had been watching the whole gig from beside the merchandise table (Jay is a shorty, so we choose to stand on the balcony so she could actually see the stage, haha).  Normally I wouldn’t bother to queue for signings, but seeing as we were inadvertently at the front of the queue, we stayed.

Woohoo!

Very cool.
Plus, it ended earlier than we expected, so we caught the last train home, and didn’t have to navigate several buses and wait-overs throughout the night.

A little photo catch up.

1. Jay, me and Reece in the park (during our mini heatwave)  2. Working on my dissertation in Costa Coffee  3. Mine, Kat’s and Becky’s bags for Conference  4. Me feeding Jessie the lamb.

5. Breakfast at Conference  6. Shopping bags from the new Cath Kidston store in Belfast  7. The amazing cake Nicky and Ruth made  8. Inside the Cath Kidston store.

9. A sneak peak at my ‘new’ bicycle  10. More park days  11. Coffee in Avoca with Mum, Steph and Suzie  12. Vintage teashop in Ahoghill (I seem to spend a lot of time in coffee shops…)

13. Flowers in the vintage teashop  14. Lunch in a brown paper bag  15. ‘View’ from my hotel window at Conference  16. Me wearing a dress for the gala awards at Conference (a rather rare occurrence).