Golden Acre Park.

Recently, I have spent no where near as much time as I would like to have here. It kind of sucks. Work is stressful at the minute, and taking up a lot of my energy; which is resulting in me not wanting to do all that much when I do get home. Any spare time I have I spend with Dixon and the pup at home.

This week I have taken a couple of days out of work to catch up on the little things; bake some bread, sew, fix up our front yard, plant some plants and make a trip into town with Eva. First though, because the weather was perfect, I took trip to Golden Acre Park and (accidentally) a little nature reserve right by it. I've never been to Golden Acre Park before, its only about 2 miles away from our house so decided I would walk.

I took a wrong turn and ended up in a little nature reserve with a beck running through it; It wasn't anything too special. I'd probably walk Eva there all the time if it was close by. Golden Acre was much better and huge. We walked around for ages. I was excited when I saw on the map there was an Arboretum! But, I either missed it because it was awfully signposted or it wasn't that impressive. Maybe its the wrong time of year to enjoy trees? The lake was pretty awesome though and full of ducks, swans and geese. There were tonnes of flowers and blossom trees too. I stopped for a (terrible) coffee in the cafe and Eva fell asleep on my lap. It was so good to get out during the day and not worry about work.

_______________________

Home-Made Dog Treats

I have been super excited to make some home-made dog treats for our pup since we decided to get her.  I'm not a huge fan of store bought dog-foods, I have a few reasons why but mainly I want to control exactly what my pup eats and so many of those companies test on animals, which is not something I want to support. PLUS, making my own treats means I can play around with ingredients I know she likes and save a little money too.

The first biscuits I made were Peanut butter and Carrot bones. I read a load of recipes and mashed one together from my favourites. I used; 1 large shredded carrot, a cup of oats, 2 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of Peanut (not added anything) butter and enough water to make a thick cookie-doughish dough. Baked at Gas Mark 5 until they were crispy.

I got the little bone cookie cutter for about £2.50 on ebay and worked out to be the perfect size for our bearded lady. The recipe made way more than I expected and she loved them. (Although, she is a puppy and will eat pretty much anything that is put in front of her...) Once these are all eaten, I'm thinking of making sage flavoured ones and using a meaty stock instead of water.

"Mooorree!!"

___________________