A Slice of England

My sister and family are visiting us and we have been exploring around. We decided to visit Bath and it was an amazing experience; what a beautiful, neatly kept city. Designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, it has a stunning architecture; breathtaking sites include the Royal Crescent, Roman Baths, Bath Abbey and many more. And if you have small children like we do, a visit to the Royal Victoria Park is a must with fantastic multiple slides, playgrounds, elaborate climbing frames and more. We all loved it, something for everyone in Bath! Here are some photos from Bath, before my batteries run out!

It is wonderful to spend time with family and friends. And especially when they come from long way and you don’t get to see them often, time spent is really precious. I cooked some Turkish food for us and put in freezer during last couple of weeks and it really paid back. Turkish food, especially stews and casseroles (like baked chicken casserole with vegetables, meatball casserole in the blog)freeze very well, which is great for having company around. And you get to spend more time with your family and friends:)

And the Baklava passed the test, joy to the world! I hope you can get to try sometime, look forward to hearing about your experience.

More Turkish recipes will follow soon. Whatever you may be cooking, Afiyet Olsun; wishing you all a nice week ahead!

My good friend Katherine studies colors and advices on which colors would work for you, taking into account of your skin color, eye color, complexion. She very kindly looked into “my colors”; it was a wonderfully informative, great as well as enjoyable experience. After checking loads of colors on me, it turned out that I am an “Autumn” woman, and my colour characteristics are muted, deep and warm. Now I have a wonderful swatch colour wallet, that I can check out what works for me best – and thank goodness, many of the colours are the ones I already like and have been using, and need to think seriously about some old favorites!- What a great investment I thought, knowing which colours would look best on you and avoid expensive shopping mistakes! Have you thought about your colours? Here is Katherine’s email if you’d like to know more; katherine.green@virgin.net

And here are a couple of my favorite colours from the garden at the moment! I am not a natural gardener; having lived in big cities and apartments most of my life, I couldn’t go more than enjoying my mothers beautiful pot plants. Being in England now though, it is impossible not to get mesmerised and be inspired by the beautiful gardens and array of flowers – I had been an addict on Chelsea Flower Show and not missing the Gardeners World now!- The children gave presents of a little geranium plant and sunflower seeds in spring, and we eagerly waited for them to grow. And just recently, “they popped!” as my daughter said. We now have a lovely geranium plant with gorgeous leaves and beautiful flowers and a lovely array of sunshine, a smiling sunflower in the backgarden. Hope these inspire many more to come!

We had a wonderful weekend of indulgence; we were at the Royal Opera House in London and saw the amazing La Traviata, it was truly mesmerising. I feel one of the joys of life is to be able to watch such wonderful performances like this live; ROH has many more productions coming up (Carmen and Marriage of Figaro are amongst). So if you plan on being in London this summer, make sure to check out the ROH’s schedule!

The next treat was seeing our dear old neighbours, Maria and Tom from Austin, in London. We had a lovely trip to the Cotswolds to show them the English countryside; the flowers in full blossom and sun in our face, it was truly magical to spend time together. So special to see friends near and far and it makes the world seem smaller!
Here are a couple of photos to share, I hope they inspire you to travel whenever you can!