Gardening, baking and sewing... all in one post!

The cold weather has set in this week, making us wary that summer is definitely over. Which is not only bad because of the temperature, but we also set ourselves a deadline of finding a new house before we had to light the fire again and it looks like that isn't going to happen. In an attempt to overcome the chill, I picked what's left of the flowers in the garden...some hydrangeas:

And a few sprigs of lavender for the bathroom:


And feeling rather adventurous today, I baked something new and sewed something new (who says I'm not living on the edge?)!

I baked a lumberjack cake (which is kind of an apple cake with a buttery coconut crust on top):

I googled it, but couldn't find out the origin of the name..

But far more exciting was today's foray into sewing something which any decent sewer should have in their repertoire, but until now I have avoided making......a sock monkey. So called as each monkey is made from one pair of socks..I chose red and white knee-highs for my first attempt and am pretty happy with the result.

He is currently unnamed (any suggestions welcome). Although I'm not going to make a habit of it, I think I will make a couple more to give to little people (like the little people who got sheep last year).