An eclectic five

September 16th

Waking up to the loudest thunder crack at 3 am does nothing for my beauty sleep nor my poor old

Fire brigade looking after us in the village

ticker.  It took some minutes before I realised that it was just a rain storm passing through and took even longer for my heart to completely calm down.  But wow what a storm, it is still raging now and our wonderful local fire brigade are out there trying to clear the drains and stop our properties from flooding.  Driving John to the station this morning took Olympic driving skills, wishing I had a car I could raise by a couple of feet too. Hope everyone is OK out here in our neck of the woods.  Did you know you can track where lighting strikes, quite fascinating.  You can zoom in on the map and see local to you, but here I show the entire UK map for lightening strikes between the hours of 3-6 am, just look!!

Lightening strikes in the UK on 16/09/16 between 3 - 6 am

To have a look at the site yourself click Lightening maps

It's unbelievable really when you think how wonderful the last few days have been, almost Mediterranean, as I walked out of the supermarket last night a wall of warmth enveloped me and I love it.  I suppose thunderstorms after heat like that are very Tuscan.  Did you see the red sun setting last night?  It was truly glorious and of course my photos did not do it justice but another weatherman I follow on Facebook snapped a great shot yesterday at Oxford station, just look at the colour of the sky, no photo editing here, promise, it just did not need it...

Pink sky at night in Oxford photo by Oxfordshire Weather Watch

Life has been continually hectic here in this eclectic home and all of my own doing, my feet have not touched the ground and I could actually really rather do without this rain today as I have a garden party tomorrow for 25 celebrating pappa's 80th, wish me luck with the weather.  As is always the case for family celebration a kransekake has to be made.  It's made and the icing is done just the final decorations need to be added later today but so far it look like this:

Baking the kransekake

Ready to be boxed up before final decoration

To find out what this cake is and how to make it follow the link:  Kransekake

I have been travelling again, I knew the travel itch was still scratching so we had a sneaky 4 days away last week in Russia.  It was truly amazing and I was blown away by the architecture, the history and the warmth of the Russian people, sneak peak at a couple of photos ahead of a Russian post...

The Church of the Spilled Blood, possibly one
of my all time favourite buildings

Just look at the detail of the interior

 And let's not forget a crafting girl has to travel with her crochet after all and in the spirit (see what I did there!) of travelling to Russia had to partake of some vodka!

Hope you have enjoyed my 5 for today, I look forward to popping along through out the week and reading all your posts too, forgive me if it takes a while I have a party to plan and cater for and then to recover from!  Joining in with the lovely Amy ...

♥There is no such thing as bad weather only the wrong clothes♥

Edit:  Just received these photos of the local train station:

And this is the pub on my road...