A COSY OCTOBER WEEK IN MY LONDON LIFE / LIVING IN LONDON

Hi guys, I hope you're doing well. Welcome to my Sunday Diaries. I'm currently at my allotment plot. I'm just finishing up from a session. I've been here for about three hours. I filmed a vlog and then I stayed for about an hour and a half just tidying everything up, clearing things that need clearing away, all that kind of malarkey, stuff that basically wouldn't look very fun in a vlog. It would be very, very boring. So I've just spent a little bit of time here. tidying up, sorting things out. I'm about to head home. I've got a little bit of a busy afternoon, so I thought let's just vlog. Let's just add to the busyness and actually vlog as well. Because I am a sucker for punishment, I know. I get a lot of questions saying, how do you make so many vlogs? I think I'm just constantly filming. I don't really think about the amount of vlogs that I make, but somehow it's ended up with three allotment vlogs and then one home vlog on a Sunday. The Sunday vlogs were kind of an experiment. They were just me trying to film something else outside of the allotment plot because it can get a little bit samey, me filming at the same place all the time. So I thought, let me just try and throw up some different vlogs on a Sunday. And actually, according to my analytics anyway, And a lot of the comments, these are kind of a lot of people's favorite vlogs of the week. So I always make sure to film a Sunday vlog because I think if I miss an allotment one, it's okay. But if I miss a Sunday one, I think a lot of people will be disappointed. And that's okay. I have content creators that I watch and they upload on Sunday mornings and it is literally part of my routine. Part of my morning routine to come down, get my cup of tea, sit on the sofa in my dressing gown and watch A Sunday vlog, and it's just calm, it's just countryside stuff, it's people baking and cooking and just showing me their lives, and I just love it. So, look at that little bit of light on my chin there, that's so funny. The lighting is gorgeous today, but we are due a storm tomorrow, so I'm hoping to get some filming done today before the storm comes. And then my house will be very dark, and I won't be able to get out, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway, been a little bit of a weird week. I think I've been up and I've been very very down and I talk about my mental health sometimes on this channel not all the time I don't like to go on and on about it but a couple of weeks ago I had another really nasty bout of anxiety it came out of nowhere and it just sort of knocked me for six and what does that mean knock knock you for six knock you for six what Why is that a saying? I'm so interested in sayings. I say them a lot and I don't know what they mean. It really came out of nowhere and it was really debilitating for quite a few days in a row and luckily for me the weather was terrible so I couldn't get to the allotment to do any work anyway, any filming or any allotment work. So I kind of just leant into it a little bit and allowed myself to feel the anxiety. I stopped trying to fight it basically. And I just said to myself, right, okay, Emma, you're feeling anxious. You're feeling absolutely rubbish. What can you do about it? Like, you're trying everything. All you can do is go about your day. Be really kind to yourself. And I took a couple of days off and I just literally read, I think I read like three books and I had like four baths and I drank too much coffee and I know that's not good for anxiety but it makes me feel happy when I drink coffee. So I was like, stuff it, we're gonna drink the coffee. I did some cooking, I did some baking and I just pushed through it but I didn't push through it in a way, so when I say that, Because I know some people are going to come at me and go, don't push through anxiety because it can make it worse. I agree. But when I say push through, I mean I didn't allow it to, I didn't allow it to completely take over and control my life. I stayed in control of my life. So I said to myself, if I want to do some baking and I'm feeling anxious, I'm just going to do the blooming baking. I'm just going to do it because I know that I want to do it. And the anxiety is like another voice in my head telling me not to. So I just, when I say push through, I mean don't let it win, don't let it take over your life and just like sit there rocking back and forth crying because it's not, I won't let it take that away from me basically is what I'm trying to say. Anyway, it's still something I'm trying to deal with, I'm trying to work out and work through and I still don't know the best way of handling it, I'm just doing my best every day, that's all I can do with it. It has got better now, I don't know if that's because I dealt with it differently this time and I decided to actually give myself a break from work and push through it by doing things that I want to do, I don't know if it just wasn't a very bad bout of anxiety, I don't know what it was, I don't know why but it sort of lasted about seven days and then it's sort of gone away. And I feel okay now, I feel so light, I feel so like, so much lighter after it. I feel like I've just got off a really horrible roller coaster and I'm like finding my feet and everything's feeling a little bit woozy but kind of feeling better so. But if you do, if you suffer from anxiety I feel you, I feel you, I've never had it like this before. I've had little bits of it in my life but I've never had anxiety where it is so utterly debilitating and it takes over your whole body and it is just the worst feeling and it is honestly if I allowed myself to get into that dark place I don't think I'll be able to get out of it and it's really scary so I feel yeah I feel yeah if you if you have anxiety and you suffer from it I just I understand it's just awful and I have nothing to say other than it's terrible and I just I feel for you and yeah I think we're gonna go home and I think I And get some lunch actually. I think I might buy myself something really nice for lunch from M&S. I do have some soup in the fridge but I don't feel like having soup today. So I think I might go down, get myself something nice. Get some treats for tonight because tonight is an episode of The Traitors. The Traitors is on. Very excited about that. So get some snacks. And right now I'm looking for my sweet peas. I brought sweet peas down here and I want to sow some sweet peas at home. They're not sweet peas are they? No they're peas. So I want to make sure I take my sweet peas home. Ah here they are. Okay so I sewed some of these here at the allotment I'm going to sew some at home as well so we'll take the sweet peas home that's another job for later. Right let's head back home. I've just got back so I think oh my gosh I thought I just stepped on Pippin my rabbit and I've just slept I've just stepped on a fluffy slipper. I thought that was Pippin then oh my gosh Gosh. I thought I crushed him. Right I'm home and I just spoke to my husband and you tell you what We're both not feeling this week at all. Like both of us seem to be in a really weird head space where we're just really struggling to focus and concentrate. There is a huge storm on the way. We're not actually getting the storm here, but we're getting like the tail end of the storm. So the weather's gonna turn really horrible. This is probably the calm before the storm. So I think what we're gonna do, instead of going to M&S for lunch, we're gonna head out to a lovely park, which is about a 15 minute drive from us. And we're gonna have a little wander around, Coffee, get a little bit of lunch there, there's a garden centre too, so I'm going to have a little wander around, though I'm not going to buy anything. Repeat with me guys, we're not going to buy anything at the garden centre. We don't need anything just yet. We need to just slow down a bit. But yeah, I think it'd just be so nice. It's a little bit windy, but it's actually quite sunny. The sun keeps coming out, so I think it'd be so nice to go for a nice long walk. I'm wearing my red jumper today. I don't know why I was saving this. I felt like I wanted to save it for November, and I've ended up getting it out in October. But I tell you what, I love red. I love the colour red on me. I just feel like I look more alive. I don't know why I don't wear red more often. I know it's a bit big-headed of me to say that, but I actually really like how I look in red. And I just think, why should red just be for November, December? I don't know why I'm acting like red is only for Christmas. This is ridiculous. But yeah, this is just, it's a cheap jumper. I only got it from H&M last year. Is it H&M? Yeah, H&M. I was looking for a red jumper last year for ages, but yeah, I just thought I'd share that I got it out today and I feel really great. Anyway, stop rambling, let's get out and enjoy this lovely autumn weather while it's still here. Because that blue sky up there is not going to last. So I'm back from the walk and I'm going to sow these sweet peas now. So I've got two different varieties here. I've got Perfume Delight and Spencer Mixed. I've also got some seeds at the allotment that I collected from last year's sweet peas. And I'm going to sow those a little bit later on if you're wondering. I'm going to do the packet ones first. So I'm just going to sort of sow every single seed that I've got. And I had these packets, well I got these packets at the garden centre the other day. I couldn't resist them because I just love sweet peas so much. I actually don't have many seeds in here. I sowed so many at the allotment. There's one more there. But yeah, overwintering your sweet peas really helps them to be really strong in the springtime. And I want lots of them basically and I also want to succession sow them this year because I think they can flower for a lot longer than they did at my allotment. At my allotment they flowered till about the end of May, beginning of June, but I think if I succession sow them they will last a little bit longer. I can sort of sow the next batch out maybe a month later and prolong the flowering season. Because they are my favourite. Do you know what I was just thinking? I could have brought home some of those peas that you can sow in the autumn time. I've got some out in my allotment. I could have sown them at the back there because all of these pumpkins need to come out now. I don't think we got much out of them. No, we didn't unfortunately. We got the start of a pumpkin and that was it. We've got a teeny tiny little pumpkin there. I think I might keep that. Stick it up on the fireplace in my front room. And then the same with that one, we've got a teeny tiny one that's too small even for a decoration so didn't do very well I'm afraid. The row of mizuna has come up really well, which is amazing. I love mizuna. It's like a salad leaf. It's a bit like rocket. It's a little bit fiery, a little bit peppery. And it's delicious and it grows so well over the wintertime. I also put in some winter lettuce and that's not come up at all. So I can't even see any slug damage. So I think they're just literally not germinated. I'll leave it alone because maybe it'll take longer to germinate. I don't know. But the mizuna's up. Quite easily, so I'm assuming that the lettuce seeds just didn't work. But yeah, I might get the peas in here. I think I'll bring them home. Look at all these chillies. Isn't that so great? This plant's done incredibly well. Amazing. And then I don't know if these ones will turn colour now because I think the weather's not warm enough. They're sort of green. I think they're supposed to go a really dark orangey colour and I don't know if they will now. So I'm just going to leave them a bit longer and see if they do change colour. And then these ones, these are my longhorn. Longhorn I think they're called? Chillies. I mean they definitely got long. They're definitely long but they didn't change colour. Like not one of them did and I've got so many growing. I've got literally loads growing in here and not one of them has changed colour, so I'm not sure what that's all about. My goodness, look at this. I've never seen a robin in my back garden before. I only eat the allotment. I think I'm going to do a bit of baking. I actually found a really exciting recipe online. It was for tarragon and hazelnut cookies, which I thought was so unusual. Tarragon... I have to buy it because I haven't yet grown it. I think I will try and grow it for next year. But it is one of my favorite herbs. I found it in a recipe ages ago. I discovered it from a recipe ages ago that said you need tarragon, and I'd never used it before, and I bought it. And I tell you what, it is my favorite herb. So the fact that you can use this in cookies, in biscuits, cookies, is amazing. So I really wanted to try it. So it's tarragon and hazelnut. I've had to buy some chopped hazelnuts. I thought we'd just give it a go and whack it together and see what they're like. So that's what we're gonna make now. Okay, so it starts quite simple with the butter, sugar, but then you mix in some chopped tarragon. So the butter and sugar goes together. This is just caster sugar and unsalted butter. Oh, it just has the most gorgeous smell. I just can't explain it. It's just absolutely delicious. So it's two tablespoons of tarragon chopped. So I reckon that's about that maybe. So intrigued to see what tarragon tastes like in a cookie. And then we just literally cream the butter and sugar together like normal. So we need to add an egg yolk. So just the yolk. Really very good at this. Oh my gosh, here goes the yolk. Well done everybody. Teamwork makes the dream work. So that goes in. Even this. Then 50 grams of chopped hazelnuts and then a teaspoon of salt. Oh my gosh it smells absolutely hazelnut and tarragon together, I would never have thought. Apparently, because I just looked it up, there's loads of other recipes of tarragon and hazelnuts. There's like salads that you can make and cupcakes and all kinds of things, so obviously it goes together really well. I just didn't know about it. Okay, now the recipe says to divide that in two, roll it up, and then put it in the fridge. That feels too sticky for me, so let me just double check the recipe. Hazelnuts, caster sugar, tarragon. Yeah, so I've done it right, but it's just too sticky to roll up, so what I'm gonna do is leave it in there, cover the whole thing with cling film, and we're gonna put it in the fridge for about two hours until that's hardened up a little bit. Okay guys it's been a couple of hours and this is not hardened up the way I wanted it to so I'm not entirely sure what's going on. I think I'm going to roll it into some balls and press it down on a baking tray and just see if we can get them cooked. Anyway let's just give this a go. I'm going to leave them in balls like that a bit like when you do like chocolate chocolate chip cookies and you kind of put them into little balls like this and we'll just see what happens with them. Here guys are Are you ready to see the finished cookies? They don't really look like cookies. I'm not entirely sure what's happened, but they kind of look like little cakes. They are definitely cooked through. They're a bit brown on the top and they're cooked at the bottom. So I'm not entirely sure what's happened, but they smell incredible. They're definitely going to be edible. It's just, I think I've just sort of made little cakes instead of biscuits or cookies, whatever they're supposed to be. I don't even know what they're supposed to be anymore. Oh well, sometimes things that you cook don't turn into what you thought they were going to turn into, they've kind of had their own plan and they follow their own plan and you're just along for the ride really and that's what happened with these. Okay, let's try one because even though they're not what they're supposed to be, they're cooked through and they smell good so they don't have as much flavour to them as I want them to have. I feel like maybe I should have used more tarragon but the tarragon is nice. The hazelnuts are nice. I feel like maybe what they needed was some ground hazelnut or maybe some ground almonds. Yeah, ground almond flour would be really good in these because it would give it that kind of nutty flavour. Or maybe I should have put some nutmeg in or some ginger. Just something to give it a little bit of a kick. I feel like they're a little bit plain, they needed a bit more of a kick. But the tarragon is nice and the hazelnut is nice. They definitely go together and the consistency is basically half a cake, half a cookie. It's sort of like half and half. It's not unpleasant though. I'll definitely get through these but it was fun trying something new. I made a new category of bakes, a cookie cake. Good morning vlog! I'm just crouching down by my kitchen window because it's so dark outside. Yesterday the storm hit so we had such a nice sunny day the day before, which is when I did all that filming at the beginning of the vlog, and then the storm hit and it was very windy, it's gone very grey, cloudy, slightly drizzly. It's the day after the storm has hit and I've booked for us to go to a pumpkin patch, so we're going to go to a pumpkin patch in a minute. It's a little bit drizzly out there, but I think it will be nice, and at least the pumpkins will really pop against this kind of grey background, that's what I'm hoping anyway. Just popped out to the shops, got a coffee, and I picked up this book at long last. I've been meaning to pick this up. Rebecca Perry lives down our street, so I really wanted to read her book. I'm going to be quick. I'm only about 15 pages into it because we've got to go but I will let you know what I think of it. Let me know if you've read this book as well, I'm really interested in how many of you have read it. It's up for a Booker Prize, I think it won the Waterstones Best Book of the Year or something so it's doing quite well and it was out of stock the other day and I couldn't find it anywhere in Waterstones and then it's back in stock today so... I've finally picked it up. I've also got a signed copy because these are the only ones that they had. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. So I've got my signed copy there. But I will let you know how this book goes. I'm very excited to get stuck in properly. But now we're going to head to the pumpkin patch. This is what I'm wearing. My new fleece from M&S. Very cosy. It's what we need today. Going to take an umbrella with me, some wellies. Let's just head out and hope that the weather holds up. Morning guys. I am vlogging from you from my greenhouse once again. So a couple of days ago we went to the pumpkin patch. I think that's the last thing I showed you. It was ridiculously cold and windy and very rainy but I tell you what it was beautiful and they really just do the best displays. So we went to, I didn't tell you where we went, we went to the Priory Farm which is in Surrey somewhere. Is it Pearly Way? Somewhere around, no, Redhill? I think it's around Redhill, Pearly. It's a really nice pumpkin patch. I refrained from buying any pumpkins, I cannot believe it. We just went for basically a little look around and it was just, even though the weather was terrible, it was quite nice. They had a lot of Christmas things out in the garden centre and I went rummaging through it all but I didn't show you that much because I feel like... It's a little bit too early to start putting Christmas things in, especially when I've just been to a pumpkin patch, you know. Let's try and keep things a little bit separate. I am actually about to go out and get a coffee. I've just finished up at the allotment plot, checking the storm damage. We had a storm. I didn't show you any of the footage of the storm because I just cosied up and watched Harry Potter instead. Please forgive me. I took the storm as a chance to have some proper time off and not do any work at all and I just sat and watched Harry Potter which was fantastic and definitely what I needed. Anyway now I've just finished up at the plot, checked the damage, you'd have seen that video on Friday. The greenhouse is just literally broken in front of my eyes but we will ignore that. That is a job for another day. I'm going to go out now and grab a coffee and then I think we're going to go for a nice long walk in Banstead. It's looking sunny but there's clouds coming and I think it's going to rain so we might go for a rainy walk and if we do, we do. It's definitely going to rain but I'm not going to complain today because I desperately need a nice long walk. Also, I've got lots of goodies to take home today from the allotments, some potatoes and a carrot for Pips. I've got something for you. I'm gonna try one of my carrots in the allotment. This is a big treat. This is a big treat. What do we think? You let me know. What do you think of that then? I think he likes it, guys. Luckily, it's only a teeny tiny little bit of carrot because carrots have got quite a lot of sugar in them and rabbits can't have too much of it, but they can have the greens. So it's got a lot of greens and only a tiny little bit of carrot for you. Yeah? It's actually a lot better for you to eat, isn't it, Pipsy? Yeah. A nice carrot, is it?