A rather lazy busy weekend ...

 My standard roses have finally 'popped'!  This is Bonica and its a great flowerer.

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 This is my McLeod's Daughters rose and it is my all time favourite.  Big blousey  blooms but they have a little rough tip on each petal.

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 Stunning colour...

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 Those bread rolls that were flops turned out to make really nice toast (and would have made great bruschetta).  All was not lost!

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 Yesterday, I made sausage rolls for a friend of mine who has had a hysterectomy...

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 and some Golden Syrup Biscuits.  This recipe is from Kim at Serendipity Cafe and you can find it here.

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 All afternoon, I had a pasta sauce bubbling away on the stove and I decided to make fresh, from scratch pasta to go with it...

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 It nearly is a two person job so I enlisted the help of hubby to help me manage the pasta machine...

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 My clothes rack made a great drying rack for the fettuccine...

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 The finished product - perfect!  I used 00 Flour (double 0) and 6 eggs, whacked it all in my food processor and whizzed it until it resembled course cous cous.  Then  I tipped it out onto my clean bench and kneaded for a couple of minutes, just bringing it all together.  I wrapped it in cling wrap and let it rest half an hour there.  The dough was great because it went through the pasta machine perfectly.

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 This was my luscious sauce which I made from scratch - for the meat I used a small piece of rump steak, two pork steaks and 4 loin lamb chops and some pancetta.   I cut all this into chunks then blitzed it in the food processor to mince it.  I fried off an onion, 2 carrots, 1 large stick of celery (these three known as a mirapoix) and 2 cloves of garlic.  Once softened, I added the mince mix in and fried that off.  Then in went a tin of crushed tomatoes, a tin of tomato puree (Leggo's) and 2 dollops of tomato paste.  Season with salt and pepper and a good tablespoon of sugar (to sweeten off the tomatoes) and let it come to the boil.  Then turn down to low heat and let it bubble away all afternoon (I guess you could use a slow cooker).  In the last hour, I added a big handful of torn fresh basil leaves and a slug of balsamic vinegar and I had some green beans left over so I tossed them in too! Bellisimo!

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 The pasta cooked up beautifully (but it did take quite a few minutes to become 'al dente'.  Normally, I would toss the pasta through the hot sauce but I wanted to halve the sauce and keep some so I just spooned it over the pasta.  Some parmesan cheese finished it off.

Have you ever made homemade pasta?  - there is no comparison to store bought!

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 On Saturday, as the house was lovely and quiet, I got out my Civil War Era blocks Dear Jane cross stitch.

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 I completed a further 6 blocks - it is quite slow going.  I nearly had a heart attack when I thought that I was 2 stitches out in a block and I thought there would be lots of unpicking to do but the pattern actually had 2 stitched missing from a block and I wasn't thrown out at all!  Phew!  It's will be lovely when finished.

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 A funny to finish off with - we've had lots of rain lately and yes, it does sound like sizzling bacon when I think of it!

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Wait, I forgot to tell you I have baby tomatoes on my tomato plants!  Excited!

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This is a baby Roma.  Grow bambino, grow!

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What did you get up to on the weekend?

Cheers - Joolz xx