Scrapping and not Scrapping

Hello my lovelies

It's a bit of a hodge podge of stuff to share today. First of all, if you follow me on Facebook you'll have already seen a photo of me that even I will concede, never thought would happen. Me scrapping. No not scrapbooking scrapping. Proper scrapping scrapping.

Yes that's me and my personal boxing coach and fitness instructor. Once a month, Nick & I don gloves and learn how to box and exercise. The very first time Dave instructed me to hit his pads, he barely could tell. A housefly, punching out of a wet paper bag, had more force behind it. Nowadays, I'm not the next Rocky but I can confidently land a punch.

As for the other kind of scrapping. The crafty type. Well scrapbooking is dying and breathing its last gasps. One day, it may have a retro appeal again. Look at baking and knitting these days. But we take more photos as a digital nation and scrapbooking can't keep up. Something new came along a few years ago and has taken its place.

Yes friends, I too have given up scrapbooking and taken up Pocket Pages.

And yes I know that a lot of scrapbookers make creative pages out of the pocket set up. But it has always felt to me like the emperor's new clothes. To me it's a photo album, not too dissimilar to the kind my parents kept.

As you can see, my preference is to take a monthly approach to my album and add photos which help trigger memories of what Nick & I got up to. There are no stories. I'm not interested in telling stories in my album. It's an aide memoire, a brief overview. We'll look over it in months and years to come and it'll trigger the memories we have no matter how faded or incorrect they may be.

So yes I've kissed goodbye to scrapping and embraced keeping a photo album.

Finally, T'is the Season to...no, not be jolly...to harvest. It's Autumn!

Finally, we have harvested our Spaghetti squashes. I really only thought we'd have a handful. We ended up with 23 and they're all whoppers. The reason we grew spaghetti squashes was because I have seen lots of tempting recipes but you simply can't buy them in the UK. The only way to get our hands on them is to buy seeds and put the ol' green fingers to work.

And that's not all we've harvested this week.

Our Quince tree has produced a bountiful supply of fruit this year. The above is just a fraction of the pickings. At the moment there are two large pans on the kitchen hob with boiling quince mush in them. The problem with quince is the lack of variety in what you can do with them. So for the umpteenth year running, Nick is making Mostardo Vincentina, a sort of chutney. It's utterly delish and good job too as there are jars and jars of it in our cellar. A lot of them Nick gives away as gifts. Friends and family come back for more, that and his homemade sloe gin.

So yes, this week has felt particularly like Autumn has arrived. Are you harvesting at the moment too? Or are you reaching to the back of your cupboards for an out-of-date tin of fruit to gift to your local harvest festival?