Post Comment Love 21 - 23 July 2017

Hello there and welcome to another #PoCoLo - if you were here last week it was good to see you, and I'm looking forward to catching up on all your posts. If you're new here this week, welcome, I'm pretty sure you're going to find some great posts and meet some friendly bloggers. Whenever you link up don't forget to tag Morgan and I in your tweets, and we'll happily retweet them, and if Friday's don't work for you then the linky is open until 11pm on Sunday evening.

It was another relaxing weekend here last weekend after a bit of a shocking week and it was nice to kick back and wander around Greenwich, even though I now go there every day for work. In fact I don't think I've ever been to Greenwich quite so much. I already know that it's a great place to people watch and on Saturday we sat and watched hundreds of WRNS being corralled for a photo to celebrate a hundred years at the Old Royal Naval College. 

We went for brunch, ate too much then walked and walked. MOH led us in the direction of a bike shop - and yesterday he collected a new bike, while my ulterior motive was to head towards the Queen's Orchard in Greenwich Park. We were lucky, it was open and you can see more of what's behind the ornate gate as that's the post I've linked up this week.

My photo though is from our visit to Gravetye Manor at the start of May. This week I was drawn to this picture of succulents with a view. Couldn't you just sit there and drink it all in, clearly a glass of fizz would help, but when doesn't it?

SUCCULENTS WITH A VIEW

Blogger Showcase: Emma from Our Fairytale Adventure

Emma writes the parenting blog Our Fairytale Adventure and along with her family are intent on travelling as much as they can over the next eighteen months before her eldest starts school. One of the three words she uses to describe herself is fiery - great word - but there's also compassionate in the mix too.  And I think I'm going to join her for an autumn evening, just as long as there's tea and cake.

Do pop over to Morgan's blog to find out more about Emma, but don't forget to connect with her on social media first:

Facebook  -  Instagram  -  Twitter  -  Pinterest

An InLinkz Link-up

Firing up our pizza oven

So once we'd filled our gabion baskets, we needed to lift the pizza oven onto the top of it. Something that was easier said than done. It comes to pieces - the base which is very heavy, the interior dome which is less heavy and then the outer dome, which is heavy and an awkward shape. 

It wasn't something I was looking forward to, even though I knew it was essential. The bruises we'd both encountered carrying it through the house (oh how we wished we had side access!) were still there, but healing and I wasn't that keen on adding to them.

As it turns out having the smaller gabion baskets to the side of the larger metre high one was a good plan as lifting kilos worth of a clay oven a metre off the floor is hard work. Less hard work if you can clamber onto a half-metre high block in the process. After a lot of sweat and tears, it was in place. Actually there were no tears, but a lot of the other stuff and some effing and jeffing all round. 

And it looks great, but it needed to do more than just look great.

It seems we've put it in a great spot, it gets the evening sun but is sheltered enough by the laurel tree to avoid the rain. That's brilliant as there'll be no excuse for MOH if we fancy pizza in the rain, well apart from having to get to the end of the garden!

Before we could use it in earnest, the inner dome needed curing. To do that MOH lit small fires around the inside and waited for the temperature to reach about 200, which was the most angst-ridden and most precise thing ever, according to MOH. And tricky, so tricky that he decided he needed an infra-red thermometer, which had I know how pleased he'd be with this I think we could have started with that and progressed to the pizza oven, it's such a good boys toy!  

Seriously if you're looking for a gadgety gift for your OH then an infra-red thermometer could be just the thing. Just be prepared for him to tell you the temperature of everything close by, including yourself. It's kind of addictive though.

Back to the fire. Look. Fire.

FIRE...

As the oven was starting to cure properly - it needs to be done over four days - I decided to make a start on dough for our 110th party. There was a lot of dough, and boy did it rise. In fact it didn't stop rising and took on a life of its own. 

THE PIZZA DOUGH ROSE MORE THAN I EXPECTED IT TOO

I like bread dough though, and while MOH tended his fire, and told me I'd made the pizza dough all wrong. I know, give him fire and a pizza oven and suddenly he's a grand master, even when I'm the one that makes the bread in this house...

Thankfully though it wasn't long before the fire needed a good close look at...

And our first pizza wasn't far behind either. We started simply; tomato sauce, torn mozzarella and topped with some torn basil (clearly we hadn't got to that bit for this photo!) and as you can see the lively pizza dough continued to bubble in the oven too.

It tasted great. Way better than any shop-bought, oven-cooked pizza and just like the ones from our local pizzeria. We just need to master slightly bigger pizzas now, and to not annoy our temperamental neighbours with the smoke...  I guess we could always offer to cook them a pizza!

I've some more dough to make - perhaps just half of what I made before, and the plan is to freeze it before it's second prove so that we're never that far away from a decent pizza.

What do you have on yours?

Nautical loos in the Sail Loft at Greenwich, what else?

It's been a little while since my last visit to the Sail Loft in Greenwich, remember the one that wowed me with the floor and its furnishings? Well this time I popped to the loo, and remembered to take my phone, and they didn't disappoint.

I suspected that it was going to be a good loo when I spotted this door. I mean it'd have to be something to live up to the boldness, wouldn't it?

And on the other side of the door, there was a large and interesting space. The often seen rectangular tiles, and spotlights, industrial nautical lighting but also a black ceiling and some gorgeous oak woodwork, and not forgetting the terracotta floor tiles. They all work fantastically well together, but at first thought probably not something you'd automatically think of.

The lights were very similar to those at El Pastor in Borough Market, so I'm spotting a loo light trend...

The double - or should that be a double double or quadruple sink - was framed with ironwork and exposed pipework, with a handy shelf above it, so there was actually somewhere to put your bag while make up or hair running repairs are undertaken. All too often there's nowhere is there and then it all becomes a bit of a juggling act.

And flowers too. A bold arrangement which looks striking against the decor.

Mirrors too, weren't in short supply.

So that's another great looking loo, and this pub keeps getting better and better in my eyes. Now all I need is another visit on a sunny(ish) day so I can check out the outside space...  Maybe, just maybe it won't be too long away!

What do you think of these loos? Are they your style, or are there elements you can use at home?