See you in 2010!
To help the RDTC the number is 0871 626 8846 and the lines are open 9am till Midnight. Each vote will cost you 10p and you can vote 10 times!
This is a ONE DAY competition.
Thank you.
A little off topic here so bear with me. For a large part of my youth I played saxophone in the Romford Drum & Trumpet Corps. I had a great time, made lots of friends, visited lots of places and generally enjoyed myself. I still retain links with the band through my friends who now run it and I help out in a smal way by loking after the website for them.
The band has been going for 52 years now and has never had a home! They are trying to get lottery funding to refurbish a hall to make their base and have been put up to win £50,000 of the "Peoples Millions" - See the website here!
Tomorrow there is a one day vote off between the band and another youth group. It's a telephone vote and open from 9am to midnight and the band needs to get enough votes to beat off the competitor. Calls will cost 10p each from a landline, anyone can vote 10 times from the same number so PLEASE donate 10p or even £1 in votes to help to give the band a home.
Having dug through piles of old photos I really could generally only find myself hiding at the back of a 70 strong band. I know I'll regret posting any old pics in a public place - I'm sure to see them plastered onto a school wall by some idiot kid who thinks it's amusing to try and ridicule others. But what the heck, it's in a good cause.
First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!
The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.
A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.
Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.
On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.
And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!
~ daisy
As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.
The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.
When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.
It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.
Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.
As always, thanks for your patience.
I just had a yen to knock up some cupcakes, I fanced fruity ones and the only fruit suitable was blackberries so presto, blackberries and cream cupcakes. They are a beautiful purple too although they don't look it in the picture.
Blackberries and Cream Cupcakes
- 180g Self raising flour
- 150g caster sugar
- 150g pureed blackberries
- 140g butter
- 120g eggs (2 large free range!)
Combine all the ingredients and give a good whizz up with the mixer. Divide into muffin cases (will leave you lots of room for a deep topping!). Cook for 20 mins in middle of baking oven (Approx 180).
Topping
- 125g cream cheese
- 90g butter
- 250g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla bean essence
Whizz it all together and pipe on.
The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that the pictures are not taken in my kitchen - it was too hot in there for the topping so I transferred to Mums kitchen as her heating was off.
The soup was made from those plum tomatoes last week - I had frozen it after liquidising in 1 litre bags. I added a litre of stock, made from my home made vegitable stock and a handful of chopped basil leaves. Thats my lunches for the week sorted.
Well yesterday was such a terrible washout - the poor dog only got one ten minute run around the field oppostie and she and I virtually swam back home and then dripped huge puddles over the floor. She wasn't even keen on going in the garden in the "monsoon". So today James and I took her for a long walk in Norsey Wood. Its a favorite walk of ours since getting Mille as our previous two places to walk don't allow dogs (Hyde Hall and Hanningfield Reservoir) and we had long planned to walk here but never got round to it. I'm very glad we did as nobody had ever told me it was a Chestnut wood - here is todays haul!
I have some roasting in the Aga right now and the rest have been cooked, peeled and frozen for later use - the supermarkets charge good money for them and a short walk into the wood gives you access to as many as you want!
I often wish I knew more about Fungi when I'm walking and today was no exception - I saw a few nice looking ones which I half thought I recognised as edible and then I saw this chap (actually afterwards I saw a few more of these!). I thought it was spectacular and that the red probably indicated it wasn't safe to eat - although I've heard that most fungi in the UK are pretty OK. Since then I've had a bit of a search and found out it is considered poisonous although dried it sounds interesting! . I'd really like to go on a course or something to learn more about fungi as I fear my foraging is missing out by not including them.
Of course after the downpours yesterday the wood was very muddy - James and I were OK in our wellies but Mille came back a very dirty girl, just look at the colour of her paws!
After a bath she smells lovely and she looks so pretty as a curly girly, it was a shame to brush her.
James as ever likes to do things his way - he went round the wood in his police outfit and told me this tree was his "church" So he stood and prayed as well as touching his poppy and saying he remembered.
Because Starbucks have the REDCUPS! I know it's sad but that's when I know it's Christmas. Enjoyed my first Christmas beverage today!
Funny thing was I popped into town to visit the new Lakeland. Which seemed a bit cramped compared to their normal stores. I was astonished however at some of their prices, £15 for 3 jars of preserves? I think I may be underpricing my homemade christmas hampers!
Town was mental too - it has to be near Christmas when that many people are out shopping. As we drove home we saw a huge queue of traffic going into the Tesco home store - get a life people it's not worth queuing for!
I made the mistake of "popping" into the farm shop today for a few things. They had boxes of baby plum tomatoes for £1.99 - one box, a 50p bag of onions and a 50p bag of peppers and I have enough pasta sauce to see me through winter - that really is a LARGE stock pot - it fills the Aga oven.
Meanwhile in the baking oven I had another batch of suet free mincemeat on the go - for my christmas hampers, I'll be taking orders this year folks! Whilst the roasting oven had a roast dinner in too - I really was using it to it's fullest for once today.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
I read about these in the Omlet forum and I thought they looked delicious. I looked at a recipe online and realised I could make them relativley fat free (certainly a LOT less fat than roasties so I had a go. I was very pleased with them.
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Place potato on wooden spoon
- Slice down at 3 to 4mm intervals - being on the spoon will stop you slicing right through
- Line a roasting tin with a piece of bake o glide (or don't if you want more washing up!)
- Sprinkle with sea salt
- Spray with spray oil - 2 sprays per potato
- Cook for 40 mins on second set of runners in the Aga roasting oven (200 in standard electric oven)
Serve with whatever topping you choose - I just sprinked over some grated cheese - they were delicious - crispy and perfect and not at all mashy. I'd never heard of them before but when I showed them to her in the annexe she said she'd cooked them before and they used lots of oil - well not like this - a new favourite methinks!
My Groups
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Gardening lovers unite! Updated: Yesterday
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Knitting Updated: Yesterday
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Grow Yer Own! Updated: Dec 4, 2009
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Awesome blog about life in WW2
