Show me a pumpkin, and I'll show you where to shove it.

 

We used templates from the internet. Did I bookmark them for reference?

No. Sorry about that.

We live a fairly frugal life in the Coffee House. I mean, you won't find us reusing our teabags five times, or crotcheting panscrubbers out of plastic bags; but if you do meet me in the supermarket it will be in one of those discount ones with huge piles of gardening equipment or children's ski suits stacked down the middle. And even a £5 overspend on my budget at the checkout will send me into a very dark mood.

So when it came the time to spend £2 on two pumpkins, I wasn't going to pick the two smallest pumpkins, was I? Admittedly, I left the ones that I could only carry with two arms wrapped around them, but I chose the raw materials for our Halloween lanterns with the knowledge that at £1 for each pumpkin, some pumpkins were better value than others.

At home, we scooped and scooped. We scooped with an ice-cream scoop and a variety of spoons. The pile of pumpkin flesh grew; my family receded into the background as I worked my way down it. By six o'clock I had a loaf of pumpkin and ginger teabread*, the weighed amount of pumpkin for two further pumpkin and ginger teabreads because I had run out of honey, a pumpkin curry, three bags of roasted pumpkin puree, a bag of roasted salted pumpkin seeds, and a thumping headache.

What was I trying to achieve? I have barely any room in the freezer for the bags of puree or any more teabread, since the freezer is so packed with emergency post-surgery meals. If I force my family to eat extra piles of teabread made with specially-bought honey, what money am I saving?

The internet, I found, is full of smug people showing off their reinventions of the pumpkin. I did fancy these muffins, but didn't fancy traipsing off in search of fresh rosemary. In the time it took me to get to the nearest supermarket and back, my pumpkin puree might have burnt to a crisp. And who on earth has the disposable income to risk a bottle of vodka in this way? What if pumpkin vodka tastes as unappetising as it sounds? And what if, when you've found the perfect-sounding meal with which to use up chunks of pumpkin, you've already whizzed it up into a useful-sounding puree that in truth you have no idea what to do with?

Mr Coffee, soothing my pumpkin-induced irritation with a glass of wine at 8.30pm, admitted that he would have just enjoyed the lanterns and flung the leftover flesh in the compost bin. I'm beginning to think he's the genius of the household.

*This teabread is utterly delicious. And it works with custard as a hot pudding, if you have opened the oven door during the cooking time to insert yet another tray of pumpkin flesh to roast and made the teabread go soggy in the middle. Just, you know, hypothetically speaking.

I'm taking bimbo back

"Everyone deserves some good old bimbo time," wrote Paola in my commentbox last week. She's right. And as the lucky recipient of a parcel of free make-up from Boots to review, I'm taking my bimbo time right now.

A few weeks before I had been sent this by email.

. 

These are the A/W looks from the Boots 17 range. A/W, I'll have you know, stands for Autumn/ Winter, even though for bimbos like me it looks as if it might be something written on the back of an electrical appliance. At the time I thought that whatever the colours, 'Enraged and Fury' was a look I might be able to pull off, since I spend a good deal of my time being furious anyway without even owning the designated eyeshadow.

As it was, it was 'Broken hearted and Sulk' and 'Vengeance and Revenge' that arrived. I am here to tell you that these eyeshadows make me look neither vengeful nor emotionally tormented.

The green one, particularly, is fab. I wear green eyeshadow a lot - alarmingly this first took place when I was 18, but more recently a lady at the Clinique counter covered me in the stuff and I loved it; at least until they discontinued the one that she sold me. It was a lovely emerald, and came in a little compact with a glittery highlighter shade. I have lost count of the eyeshadows I have tried in order to replace it.

However. The search is over. The green eyeshadow trio above is perfect - two shades of green and a silver with a bit of sparkle. And it stays on, which considering the time I spend during the day with my face in my hands in despair is amazing. Very tired people do not wear make-up well, I have found; but this trio has the right balance of bold colour and sparkliness to prevent me looking like a woman who really needs to crawl into a hole and sleep for the winter. I love it.

The purpley trio is very good, too. Recently a make-up demonstrator woman in a shop gave me what she called the Classic Smoky Eye, which I'm sure I could have recreated with this if one of the three colours had been a little bit lighter. They look more contrasting in the packaging; but even the lightest colour is still quite dark, so I've had to work a bit harder at not looking like I've been punched in the face. But  now I've learned to avoid its pitfalls, I wouldn't be without it; it's really very subtle and flattering. And used sparingly it creates a plum-coloured effect - certainly not as frighteningly purple as the vengeful woman above would suggest.

Two matching nail varnishes were also sent. I often paint my nails during the Lattes' swimming lessons; it's a race against time that, so far, No7 nail varnishes have won hands down. The big test - getting Eldest in and out of the shower and back into her shoes and foot splints - has defeated many lesser nail varnishes, including the two in my parcel, even though they did claim to be Fast Finish. I loved the purple colour, though, which is just the right amount of shimmery for regular wear. I model it above; be aware that all my nails broke off last week when I was struggling to get into the wheelchair store, so only two nails are visible: the rest are ruined stumps.

The final item from Boots was 17 Blemish Balm. I have to admit I read the information several times and was still no wiser. Was it foundation? What was it for, exactly?

 

A quick google revealed that Blemish Balms are a combination of anti-blemish skincare, primer, foundation, concealer, moisturiser, and SPF. Well, why didn't you say that? It has SPF25, which is always something that attracts me to a product since I'm freckled and sun-ravaged even though I've spent most of my life in the shade.

The Blemish Balm has a bit of colour - though not the choice you'd get on the foundation counters. With it on, I don't really look like I'm wearing make-up, but neither do I look like the walking dead, which is a bit of a miracle. And though all the talk of 'wonder cream' and 'imperfections' dances around the issues, it is certainly very good over spots.

Without a doubt, Blemish Balm is the stuff I will definitely be putting in my bag for the two weeks Eldest and I will stay in hospital after her surgery. Two weeks on a ward. I will probably be tired, wan-looking and sporting the 'imperfections' which inevitably arrive with stress and fatigue. I'll likely be thankful for "magical 'no make-up make-up".

Also I'm taking whisky. You think I'm kidding.

I wasn't paid for this article, but products were were provided free for review by Boots.

Popping by

Just a quick post tonight; this is one of the busiest work weeks of the year in the Coffee House, so getting around to blogs has been one of those luxuries that you dream of whilst trying to do a multitude of other things. But I just wanted to thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post - what a set of fabulous, glittering star-like people you are. It's unbelievable, sometimes, how precious this blogging can be.

But for now, bear with me. I shall be back soon with some eyeshadow that Boots sent me to review, and some heartbreaking tales of dressmaking failure. Make-up and dresses. It's all going to go a bit bimbo over here.

Reasons to be stressful, part three

• Littlest has insisted on a goldfish. Long-term readers of this blog will know how that always goes. 'Rosie' - the most antagonistic goldfish I have ever seen -  commenced her inevitable swim toward death in our home at the weekend. I have yet to understand why people claim to find fish so stress-relieving. To my mind, Rosie moves in a manner that suggests a good deal of suppressed anger.
  
  
• Night-times - and their accompanying wakenings in order to replace Eldest's orthotic foot and leg splints - have begun to take on a hallucinatory quality. (The child is a miniature Houdini, who can undo 18 straps of heavy-duty velcro in the dark without a sound, and without even opening her eyes.) Mr Coffee and I take it in turns to set our alarms at roughly 2-hour intervals, but the mind works in strange ways at 3am. Last night I heard the alarm, woke up, dutifully put it back on for two hours later and then went back to sleep, fully convinced that I had set myself an alarm in the middle of the night solely as a reminder to set myself an alarm in the middle of the night.
  
  
• The garden is turning into something worthy of its own strange dream. The thick spiky hedge rivals the thicket from Sleeping Beauty; the gardener who spoke with such promise of his chainsaw never arrived. The courgette plants that my mother's friend coddled into life for us whilst we were on holiday have actually shrunk since July. We have not harvested a single red tomato from about 15 plants. The peppers gave up growing several months ago, having proudly reached two inches high. It rains. It rains. The strawberry plants are sending runners out into the cracks in the patio.
  
  
• In November, Eldest goes into hospital to have a large amount of surgery on her hips, legs and feet. Yes, I did just throw that in amongst a load of stuff about fish and strawberry plants. We will spend two weeks in hospital before returning home for a period of rehab which could last up to a year. The decision to go ahead with the surgery - which is intended to stave off the loss of mobility that  children with increased spasticity experience as they grow - has not been easy, but nor has it been a decision we have made alone. Eldest wants to keep walking. Her bravery makes us proud. And it makes getting up at all times of the night a price worth paying.

Win breakfast for a year for your child's school

So, the other week Kellogg's took me and a handful of other bloggers to a spa in Manchester and painted our nails. I'm not kidding - see?

The point of the day - besides making my nails look sparkly - was to talk about breakfast clubs. Government budget cuts have led to a squeeze on school breakfast clubs - with 50% of clubs considering closing because of money troubles. But with one in seven UK children skipping breakfast - and 25% of kids buying crisps, chocolate and burgers on the way to school - it's a worrying trend. Without food, children perform worse at school; breakfast-skippers are also more likely to be obese.

Every day, 325,000 children go until lunchtime without eating. That can't be good.

Since 1998, Kellogg's has helped set up 500 breakfast clubs in schools, investing £1.5million so far to help schools give children a healthy start to their day. And now a donation to the Kellogg's Breakfast Club Trust will be made for every packet of Cornflakes sold - with the aim of raising money for 1 million school breakfasts. Grants are available to schools wanting to set up clubs - there's more information about the scheme here.

Kellogg's has offered readers of this blog the chance to win a year's supply of breakfast cereal (that's about 100 boxes) for their school. Just leave me a comment saying you want to enter - the competition closes at midnight GMT on October 22. I'll choose the winner with the random number generator after then and announce it during the week beginning October 24 (so don't forget to check back!). Entrants must be in the UK.

So - enter away! And don't just enter yourself - tell all your friends at your child's school to come over too, and boost your school's chances!

I wasn't paid for this article - but I did get a rather yummy lunch and a manicure.