This week PlayPennies loves Tales from the Village.

If, like most of the country, you woke up to snow this morning and have had enough of snowman building and snowball throwing, then might I suggest you defrost with a warm cup of something and take a mooch through Rachel's blog - Tales from the Village.

Rachel's 2011 turned into a bit of a roller coaster ride and saw some unexpected changes; she moved house with her four children, their dog, their car and some tropical fish just before Christmas, is starting a new life and has invited 'us all' to keep her company whilst she does; I will, there's strength in numbers and good company.

If you like looking at photographs, there are some stunning images to please your photographic soul and if you like 'Dear So and So...' posts - which I do, a LOT - then you'll find some peppered through Tales from the Village.

Honesty, an easy read and a glimpse into Rachel's life, musings, ambitions and hopes for the future is what you'll get if you pay her a visit.  Oh, she's also in the process of publishing a book, has a second one in mind and is creating the cast for the third - if you're a wannabe writer but have been too scared to start, perhaps you'll find some inspiration in Rachel.

I've loved reading through the pages and posts of Tales from the Village, I think you will too.

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UPDATE - please read this response to Sian To from Mummy-Tips

This week PlayPennies Loves Mummy-Tips.

Normally, with PlayPennies Loves posts, I highlight several posts and ramble on about light and fluffy 'things' - I'm not going to do that today.   Today's PlayPennies Loves is difficult; for many of us it will be impossible to imagine (thankfully) but I want you to read just this one post - it's important and it may just save someone's life.

• Black Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...

Black Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...is about post-natal depression and attempted suicide.  Suicide that went wrong, which subsequently enabled everything to come right...

I cannot comprehend the despair that comes with post-natal depression; when your hopes of 'happy families' are anything but and you feel there's no way out of the dark.

Despite greater awareness of this terrible illness, too many people are still struggling and suffering in silence - only when people are brave enough to share their stories can we even begin to relieve those silences through greater understanding and early detection.

If you know suspect someone you know may be suffering from post-natal depression, please (as the author of Mummy-Tips says at the end of her Black Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday post) reach out to them; if you're worried that person is you then p-l-e-a-s-e talk to someone and ask for help.

I'm a Mrs M, so I couldn't resist paying another Mrs M a visit - so this week, PlayPennies loves...At Home with Mrs M!

I'm not usually a fan of lots of reviews on blogs, but the first one I came across from Mrs M was one for Just Dance Kids for the Wii - I have kids and I have a Wii and we (well, me and my 16-year-old daughter) love Just Dance 3.  My youngest likes to try and play but it's all just a bit much for him and, having read Mrs M's review, I think it could be just the thing for him; he'll be thrilled.

The next post caught my eye because, quite frankly, the sausages in the image at the top looked A-MAZ-ING!  They're Nigella's Cranberry and Soy Glazed Sausages and if I wasn't back in serious training and eating then I'd be giving them a go!

Food features rather prominently in Mrs M's blog - whether you're looking for one-off or weekly inspiration then the RECIPES category is the place to look.

Mrs M also needs your help...

"Mr M has just turned 40 and my parents have rather generously offered to take care of the children whilst we go away for a week. We're unrestricted on time of year so the world pretty much is our oyster."

The thing is, when the world truly is your oyster - WHERE do you actually go?!  This is Mrs M's dilemma and she's asked for help - where would you go if you were in her shoes?

For my holiday money I'd go somewhere hot, quiet and as I'd be travelling sans kids, I'd have to go somewhere where it was adults only too - oh and there'd need to be the most amazing beach and warm, WARM sea to swim in.

There'd also need to be a beach-side cocktail bar too - I'm rather partial to the odd cocktail now and again, Mrs M is too as evidenced by the cocktail recipes that pop up here and there when you're At Home with Mrs M.

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This week PlayPennies loves - Single Parent Dad, again, 18 months on.

There are just a couple of blogs that I really get sucked into and have to stay in touch with - I become 'involved' with the people they're about and I want to know how they're getting on.  I don't read every day, or every month, but every now and again I pop by just to check that their worlds are still turning.

None more so than Single Parent Dad - click HERE if you want to read his first PlayPennies Loves post, it'll give you some brief background (you may want tissues, if you visit the 'I'm in big trouble' post).

I loved reading Ian's posts before and, having gone back, I still do - he still makes me laugh, he still has a lovely easy way with words and humour that makes me smile and most importantly, today, it was comforting to be reminded that getting-kids-to-write-thank-you-notes-trauma is a universal and not exclusively mine (may I just point out that this will continue well into the older end of the teenage spectrum!).

I had to smile (see, I told you - there's lots of smiling when you read Single Parent Dad) when I read about how Max has 'grown' over the last 18 months when it comes to choosing 'friendship over possessions' - that's all I'm going to say about this post because I want you to go and read it and smile this Sunday lunchtime too.

I want to wish Ian well with his intentions for 2012 and putting himself first again, just a little bit, and hope you'll pay him a visit - you'll laugh, you might cry and you'll definitely gain a bit of perspective as far as your own life and worries are concerned.

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This week PlayPennies loves Carrots and Kids.

I. WANT. To go to Deb's house! I've read through lots of her posts but even before then, just reading the 'more of me' page was enough...

"If blogs could transport you literally into the lives of the blogger we'd probably be sitting around my very messy kitchen table (how do people keep stuff off theirs?) and I might possibly be foisting a home-made cake onto you while brewing a lovely cup of coffee."

Combine that with the photos that pop up in lots of Deb's posts and the fact that I take photographs in my offline-away-from-PlayPennies life, then that coffee and cake sounds even more enticing - I'm a sucker for images with a very shallow depth of field!

I like gardening, plotting and planning what I'm going to plant and where - so does Deb.  I didn't see the first series of Downton Abbey but got sucked in to the second series (albeit a few episodes in) - so did Deb, although she's ploughing her way through series one on DVD...I'm not.

I was also glad to discover that it's not just me that's (temporarily) dumped my large beast of a DLSR camera in favour of my much easier to cart around, massively smaller (although not in terms of megapixels) iPhone camera.  You know, there are times when I just don't want to mess around with settings, when I just want to keep it simple and go on a bit of a photography 'holiday'.

So you see, I could spend hours chatting away with Deb over a shop-bought cake with sand on the bottom with chaos happening in the background -

"...as I write, I am sitting at my (messy) kitchen table drinking green tea with apple and pear and eating a shop bought cake which I have discovered has a layer of sand on the bottom. See? Today I have sand on my kitchen table."

- right now that all sounds like a little piece of heavenly peace.

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For the first PlayPennies Loves of 2012 (I wonder how many times I'm going to write 2011 before the new date sinks into my brain) we're loving Mellow Mummy.

As you know, we love bargains here on PlayPennies and two-for-one deals are just the sort of thing we like - you get this with Mellow Mummy as she's running two blogs in tandem just now, her normal blog and a pregnancy blog.

Mellow Mummy is 23 weeks pregnant with baby number two and I'm an absolute sucker for pregnancy diaries/blogs/whatever you want to call them.  I'm well and truly done when it comes to producing babies but, wow, do I love reading about other people who still embark on that journey - I think partly to serve to remind me why I never want to do it again *grin*

This week PlayPennies loves Mum in the Mad House.

The first two posts I read over at Mum in the Mad House made me smile with, both, empathy and nostalgia; the third had me in tears and made my heart ache, so I'm loving Mum in the Mad House as a way to send a virtual PlayPennies hug to Jen.

The one where I moan about the Nativity really made me chuckle.  I've 'done' more Nativities than I care to remember and missed my youngest's last year as I was away in South Africa; this year we (me and my ex-husband) were supposed to be going to the evening performance tomorrow but they SOLD OUT of tickets - it's only for Reception and Year One for goodness sake! - so we're going to the one o'clock performance on Thursday afternoon instead.

The thing is, my daughter needs to be right across the other side of the county at midday for her Army selection tests. So not only will I have dump her and make a mad dash cross-county BUT I just KNOW I'll need to get there ASAP or fall foul of the very thing that Jen describes in her post...

"as soon as the doors opened there was a mad dash through the corridor to the lower school hall and people running for chairs as though they were sunbeds that some German tourist might claim and not content with one chair, oh no they claimed 3 or 4 for their friend who was just behind them - yeah right."

The A Little Legacy - Christmas post took me back to my childhood christmasses; my mum used to make decorations from crepe paper and hang them from the ceiling.  I loved helping her make them and decorate the tree - it's a far cry from my own adult decorative tastes and I wouldn't have crepe deccies hanging up now, but thinking about them always evokes such strong memories.

We used to go to my paternal grandparent's house on Christmas Eve, stay home on Christmas Day and then go to my maternal grandparent's for a big family party (with more presents, fancy dress and all sorts) on Boxing Day.

Jen has lots of decorations that are older than her, that she inherited from her mum which brings me to the post that made my eyes well up with tears and feel compelled to send her this virtual PlayPennies hug.

Jen's mum died last Christmas Eve and this years is proving tough for her; please don't NOT read it because it's sad and, yes, it will probably make you cry, but I think it serves as an important reminder to treasure the people we're close to, not take them for granted and look after them the way Jen did with her mum.

Happy Christmas to you and your family Jen; I rarely tell my mum that I love her (we're not really like 'that') but I just did and I have you to thank for that - I'll be thinking of you and yours on Christmas day this year.

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This week PlayPennies loves...Muddling Along Mummy.

I've been sitting here chuckling away and nodding in agreement for at least an hour reading through Muddling Along Mummy; I got so engrossed, in fact, that I'm now cutting a bit fine to have this posted by 1pm *eek!*

So, here are a couple of the posts that had me nodding frantically, thinking 'yes, YES!' to myself (in a non-when-Harry-met-Sally kind of way).

The first one - Could Someone Please Find Me A Wife - hilarious!

This week Playpennies loves...Bringing Up Charlie.

If you like a blogger who writes about whatever  happens to pop into their mind at any given time, waffles (in the nicest sense of the word) around it all, asks lots of questions and then answers them in the next breath, then you're going to love Bringing Up Charlie too.

"I know I answer most of my own questions most of the time. It's a dirty rhetorical habit I've been trained to do," is from the No Comment(s) post and has to be one of my favourite lines from a blog ever - a dirty rhetorical habit, I have one of those - it drives the Teenagers nuts.

Bringing Up Charlie is written by a stay-at-home dad - a rare, but ever-increasing breed - and decide to blog about it - you can meet Tim, Charlie's dad, by clicking on the 'Meet the Blogger' video link on the right hand side of the page (what nice chap).

This week PlayPennies loves... Thinly Spread.

That's me - thinly spread (there are rarely enough hours in the day) and also how I like butter on crumpets (just as an aside).

I love Christmas.  I love everything about it and can't WAIT to put up all the Christmas things and transform the house into one of those amazing Christmas homes you see in the movies.

So imagine my delight when I came across the Festive Friday posts over at Thinly Spread; all things Christmassy and festive to really get me in the mood!

I was also thrilled to see the post featuring the DANGERS OF MENINGITIS - in fact, it's what made me decide to feature Thinly Spread.  I you only have time to read one post, even if you think you know all there is to know about meningitis, how to spot it and what to do I DON'T CARE, GO and read this post anyway - you might learn something new and it might end up saving someone's life.

This week PlayPennies Loves...Kate Takes 5

I was drawn to the title of Kate's blog because for the last two weeks I've been pulling almost all-nighters to get a job done in my non-PlayPennies life - I say almost all-nighters because I've still been in bed between the hours of 4.30 and 6.30am, so almost but not quite; take five, so I did - with Kate.

I'm a list person, I really don't function well without them, and I just like them in general; imagine my delight, then, when I discovered various lists on Kate's blog!

Top 5 Randoms - I like the smell of petrol too, always have! - and then the Top 5 Famous People I Used To Fancy: James Dean, check; Michael J Fox, check; Matt Dillon, definitely check! There was, in fact, only one of Kate's top five famous people she used to fancy that I didn't - bet you can't guess which one!

This week  I'm loving Tattie Weasle.

I swear if I didn't know better I'd say either me, my mum, my daughter or my cousin wrote it - the tone of voice and the turns of phrase are so US!

This week PlayPennies loves Diary of a Premmy Mummy.

I've been up for a very long time already - by very long time, I mean since 2.17am (don't ask) - and not a lot has made me smile since 7am.  I'm beyond tired and what I need to get done is just NOT happening!

So when I tell you that Leonna, the author of Diary of a Premmy Mummy, has had me giggling away please be assured that she's FUNNY.

Her daughter was born at just 25 weeks and weighed an astonishingly titchy 1lb 7ozs - my youngest son was born three weeks early and I thought he was small at 5lbs 5ozs - and her blog jumps from the present to 'back then' and everything else in between.

I'm not sure how she's done it, but Leonna's managed to write with suitable gravitas and feeling, whilst being funny without trivialising the story she's telling you.  Let me see if I can find you a good example...

Extracts from The Birth Story

"Looking more than a little unsatisfied with the sitation he told us that he had been on the phone trying to organise a bed and cot space for myself and the baby but as yet had been unsuccessful.

'I have to tell you that 90% of women whose waters break go on to deliver their babies with in 24 hours.'

'The difficulty is there are hospitals with cot spaces but no bed space and visa versa. However as yet we have found no hospital within our network with both bed and cot space available'

Oh no.. Mary and Joseph..

OMG! We're like Mary and Joseph..."

Leonna was eventually ferried off by ambulance to Portsmouth, some 150 miles away from her home, and once there was put under the care of Mr David Davies...

"The faint frown lines that appeared etched on her face suddenly became more profound as the heart beat began  plumiting down to 170  and she looked at the doctor shiftily.

They left the room.

I knew they were outside the door having a private clinical discussion because of the way they scuffled off together. Besides, I could see the doctors dodgy barnett through the little square window in the door."

There are so many other throw away lines peppered throughout Leonna's posts that have raised a smile on my face today, like this one, from The Every Day Mum Fantasy post.

"You see up until this day it was my understanding that sure start was for families from disadvantaged backgrounds. Well that cant be me. (For a start  I have a dyson.)"

That dyson comment had me properly laughing-out-loud and THAT'S the general tone of Leonna's blog - there's some serious stuff going on in her posts but, my goodness, she adds just the right amount of humour resulting in a blog I could get lost in for hours.

Pay Leonna a visit; you'll learn lots, be thankful for small mercies (if you're not having the greatest day) and have a bit of a laugh too.

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This week we're loving Geekmummy here at PlayPennies.

Most of us love our tech' here in the PlayPennies office, so we already feel a bit of a kinship with Geekmummy. I love my iPhone and so does she; some of us have iPads, so does Geekmummy.  Her young children are more than au fait with the ways of everything 'i', my youngest has had his own iTouch since he was four and knows his way around the iPad better than I do!

This week PlayPennies Loves...Three Bedroom Bungalow.

If a blog features 'Dear So and So' letters then that's already a stack of points in its favour; I love 'Dear So and So' letters, they invariably make me chuckle and/or have me nodding in agreement.

There's a lovely frank and honest feel about Three Bedroom Bungalow.

Kat, the autor, is an American military wife living, for now, over here in good old Blighty.  Her husband is often away here there and everywhere for work and they have two girls aged seven and four.

Some blogs try to be funny, and try too hard in some instances, whilst others just are.  Some blogs try to impart great philosophy and wisdom, and try too hard in some instances, whilst others just have a way with words.

I just get the feeling that if we met Kat, we'd met a person in physical form who is just the same as her written self; like I said earlier, she just seems honest in what she writes.

My heart sank and, I swear, my heart rate went up when I read The Chair.

When you're faced with losing something incredibly precious, you really do feel physically sick.

My grandfather flew Lancaster Bombers in the Second World War and he gave me the silk scarf, printed on both sides with maps of Europe, they were issued with in case they got shot down over enemy lines.

My eldest son took it to school so it could be part of a WWII display and it was stolen/misplaced/whatever whilst it was there; some 10 years on and I'm still devastated.

Relocating to a different country is always a big deal.

Kat and her family have one more year left in the UK and thoughts are, naturally, turning to whether or not they should/want to extend their stay here or go back to the United States.

Kat wants to stay, her husband is leaning towards going back to America and he will have the final say - if your heart doesn't go out to Kat when you read this post then it must be made of stone.

I particularly enjoyed her musing on whether or not child experts are winging it.

I reckon yes.  In fact, I think we're all winging every day most of the time.  But child experts..?  I like to think they sometimes find themselves sitting in the corner with their jumper pulled over their heads, just hoping everything will all have gone away when they pluck up the courage to peek out again...it just makes ME feel better.

They were just some of the posts that 'spoke' to me over at Three Bedroom Bungalow, why not go and see which ones resonate with you.

This week PlayPennies Loves...Mrs Trefusis Takes A Taxi.

I'm distraught.

My beloved Springboks rugby team have been robbed of a World Cup semi-final place by Bryce b*!#*!y Lawrence [the ref'] who managed to miss two blatant high tackles that the entire WORLD saw.

It was a bit early to start drowning my sorrows in beer at 8am, so I headed off to lose myself in Mrs Trefusis Takes A Taxi - it worked too, and for just a couple of hours I forgot about my rugby heartache.

Selected by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 Best Blogs, you know before you start that you're in for a treat.

This week PlayPennies loves...Baby Baby.

I've got a lot on my plate at the moment...

• Teenage son right near the end of the gruelling British Army selection process (anyone who tells you it's easy is lying)
• A big project that's scaring me a bit and
• A husband who's over 6,000 miles away; it'll be another 10 weeks until I see him next

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed this morning until I dropped by Baby Baby and looked at THIS POST - there is ALWAYS someone worse off than 'you'.

That single image, with no words, has managed to lift my mood, brought a smile to my face and has, in fact, made me chuckle and get a grip of myself.  I may even email Sandy and ask her permission to print it, so I can stick it on my office wall as a timely reminder, and something to make smile, whenever the proverbial starts to hit the fan!

There are lots of other reasons why I love Sandy's blog; they might not be the same for you.

She has two boys, aged three and four, who were born within a year of each other; this was planned.  My teenagers - 17 and 16 - were born on the same day, a year apart; this was planned this and I know what having children that close together can do to a person.

On the one hand it's easier now they're that much older but, on the other, it's harder.  Arguments aren't triggered by stolen toys any more, they're triggered by hormones and they can rage on for weeks.

So it's rather nice, for me, to read about the 'good old days' of life with two young ones so similar in age - sorting out schools was always fraught with drama and tension, it seems this hasn't changed.  It got even worse when one was at one school and one in another; much easier now that one has left and the other only has a year to go!

Sandy's Baby Baby blog is lovely to read; she has such an easy and entertaining style - it's small wonder that she has, since parenthood, become a published author.

She also lives a hop down the M1 from me, in Milton Keynes.

I'm rather fond of popping into MK and it's nice to read about someone else who appreciates it and isn't afraid to say so!

• Reasons to love living in Milton Keynes #1
• Reasons to love living in Milton Keynes #2 
• Reasons to love living in Milton Keynes #3

These are some of the reasons why I love Baby Baby; pop over and have a nosy round and I'm sure you'll find some too.

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This week PlayPennies Loves...Mummy Do That!

If you've got kids of moving and speaking age then you'll know that, at the end of lots of days, you're going to fall in to bed feeling utterly exhausted.

When they're small you're run off your feet and physically exhausted; when they're teenagers it's a combination of both physical and sheer emotional exhaustion.

When they've left home...?  I'm SO looking forward to that!

The author of Mummy Do That! is only four-and-a-half-years down the parenting trail and, returning to work after the arrival of baby number two, her post 'Things I forgot in the last 12 months' really made me smile.

Some of the forgotten things include:

• Tea tastes better hot
• Adult conversation that usually last longer than 10 seconds and are pretty fun
• I feel totally and utterly good about myself because I'm doing work that goes from A to D via B and C and is not eternally interrupted by whining, bum wiping, food providing and baby holding. Yay, I feel like I'm being productive.

Just wait until her daughters become teenagers, I can guarantee that, "What it's like to have clothes that are your own, not borrowed and then hidden in the back of their wardrobe, because the borrower didn't ask if they COULD borrow it in the first place!" will be added to another 'Things I'd forgotten' list.

Our mummy blogger (I'm really not sure I like that label) also muses on what on earth to do with all the baby and young child things we accumulate in an alarming space of time.

She's possibly the only person I've come across to actually make a loss at a sale *chuckle*

I also love how she'll choose a topic and then just 'discuss' it with you, in an over-a-cup-of-coffee-round-the-houses-musing kind of way.

Oh, and if you're into knitting then she knits too - like a DEMON!

I can't knit; well I can, sort of, but only knit-on-perl-one (isn't that stocking stitch or something?) and I can't cast-on, cast-off OR pick up dropped stitches.

There's a book of 37 knitting patterns that you can buy through Mummy Do That! which is sold in aid of Save The Children.

If you're tired of hearing, "Mummy, do THAT!" this afternoon, grab some cake and a cup of tea, shut yourself away and spend an hour or two reading Mummy Do That!

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This week PlayPennies loves Alcoholic Daze.

'Loves' seems like the wrong word to use - 'strongly recommends' might be better.

You know, life's not always pretty and sometimes it doesn't do any harm to remember that.

Most of the time the blogs we feature on a Sunday are jolly, lovely stories of parenthood and childhood; cakes and pictures of parties abound and everything is, on the whole, fluffy and happy.

Before you rush to the conclusion that Alcoholic Daze is going to be the opposite, based on what I've said so far, it's not.

It's an utterly compelling story of a woman whose husband was an alcoholic, how she watched him lose that battle and how she's subsequently fighting her way back to normality.

I've spent, at least, the last three hours reading through the archives of Alcoholic Daze; I started with the most recent posts but very quickly felt I owed it to the author to go back to the beginning, to dip in and out of it seemed, somehow, disrespectful to her and what she had to say.

As soon as I've written this 'blog spotlight', I'll be picking things up from where I left off.

You see, it's easy to get sucked into the small things of every day life and blow them out of all proportion; you can end up feeling sorry for yourself or overwhelmed - well I do sometimes, I don't know about you.

Reading accounts of other people's battles with serious issues, serves to remind me that I live a charmed life; I do, and I'm not sure why it's so easy, for those of us that have nothing to complain about, to forget this.

Alcoholic Daze is full of courage, humour, sadness, anger and hope; about a wife and mother trying to do her best by everyone.

It won't drag you down if you're having  a fabulous weekend, I promise.

It will, I hope, make you stop and think and be left with admiration for the author,  a woman who has a strength of character I hope I'd be able to find should I ever be required to.

I'm not going to highlight posts for you to pick and choose from; if you want to dip in and out at random then that's up to you, I urge you to start from the beginning.

"You can imagine the sight of us as we drove off the ferry and through the customs' shed at Dover. The car was piled high with the camping gear - tent, cooker, lanterns, kitchen sink etc - suitcases, us, 72 bottles of wine, a few bottles of spirits, AND Snoopy perched on top. You couldn't have found room for a pin.

The customs officials waved us through with bored looks on their faces and had no queries at all about the dog. We breathed a sigh of relief. The holiday had been a great success.

That was in late August. In November, I had occasion to go into our celler, where the wine was stored, and noticed that the last bottle of wine had been drunk and I had only had about six glasses in total myself..."

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This week PlayPennies loves...Country Heart and Home.

OH my goodness!

It's rare that I find myself feeling twinges of envy when faced with other people's abilities, but meandering around Country Heart and Home has left me feeling a couple of things

1. inadequate
2. inspired!

Debbie is, and I quote:

"Mum to 4 gorgeous boys and 1 perfect princess. Wife to a very supportive husband. I am a scrapbooking, cardmaking, lover of all things shabby chic and domestic goddess wannabe!"

Domestic goddess wannabe?  If ever a word was superfluous in a sentence, it's 'wannabe' in this one.

There's so much to read, look at and get inspired by within the virtual pages of Country Heart and Home that I'm not sure which direction to point you in first.

It would never have crossed my mind to throw my kids a 'back to school' party - probably because I'm a party grinch - so on the one hand I'm feeling less-than-motherly because I never did this, whilst giggling on the other when I read Debbie's reason for throwing it:

"We have 3 boys back on Tuesday and 1 back on Wednesday so I decided to throw them a party...

Scott: 'mam why would we have a party to go back to school - we arent happy??'

Me: 'I am and that's worth a party!' lol"

HA!!  A woman after my own heart. I read that little bit to my mum, she laughed too.

If you fancy turning your hand at making things and getting all arty and crafty then there are a TON of things for you to try - I really love the look of these tissue pom poms and remind me of things my mum used to make when I was little.

If you're stuck for some culinary inspiration then there are LOADS of recipes for you to try out too - lots of them are listed in the 52 Week Recipe Challenge running down the left-hand side of the page.

Underneath that there are step-by-step recipes - all of them look good and worthy of testing.

The worst thing about paying a visit to Country Heart and Home is going to be prising yourself away from it, and/or deciding which 'something' to try and make and what to cook first.

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