Its been a while steemians, but first thing is first.

And that is fall... fall is here for sure the temperature has slumped to 17C, many of you will say well that is warm.
Not when your used to over 30 degree weather it is not.

What has been happening.

There is a distinct smell of roasted peppers in the air, looking around at the gardens I see that many of the gardens have been cleared and ploughed over ready for the next year of vegetables to be sown in the spring.
Our neighbours have been so kind to us since we have got here, we have had an amazing amount of fresh produce, onions, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapeños, strawberries, apricots and probably soon to be pumpkin.
This week i was given a huge bag of peppers which I have been roasting to try to keep them from going bad, tonight I am cooking a Bulgarian Moussaka, which I have not done for a while and now is the perfect weather for this type of comfort food.

Our savings are dwindling down and we are doing much needed work on the house, we have replaced all the windows with upvc ones they are considerably cheaper here than at the uk, and now we are insulating all the walls ready for the winter to hit.
We nearly have all our wood stock ready for the fires to be lit, we are not there yet with the cold but you can tell its not far off.

I am already thinking of activities I can do during when we are snowed in, I have a plethora of adult colouring in books, which I will be starting, I find them to be a good stress reliever but when I have the time to colour in at the moment is a mystery.
And there is also planning the garden for next year. Now that I have a taste of growing my own vegetables its time to get serious. On Monday I made a roasted pepper and butternut squash soup, which was pretty tasty and to be honest had most of the stuff come from our own garden it would have only cost me a little oil and some cream and the rest would have been from us.

Now I feel like winter is chasing me I want it to be the other way around so this time next year, I can say we have got in what we need in and we can relax a little, the whole thing about moving here was for a different way of life and that is something that I need to start adopting, I have to stop thinking of everything like England, ok most things I can get by with or find a substitute. This year I learned that baking our own bread was more worthwhile than buying it. If I can get hold of things like sultanas I can do fruit scones next year, and also the cream here is a little sour but i'm sure with a little icing sugar I can do something about it.

So I have toyed with this whole branding thing about living in Bulgaria, right now there is no one doing it about this lovely country and sometimes I wonder why, and then I think I should do it but it is more will I have the confidence to do it?? That confidence as I can see will only grow with time so now I have to swallow hard and move forward with it, take the crap with the good and enjoy the ride.

I guess its a case of watch this space.

2018 will be the best year yet, I cant wait to share it with you all.

Until next time.