A Webbers work is never done!

It was supposed to have rained today but it didn't, no surprises there, perhaps tomorrow. The day started quite humid so it felt warm, the sun came out occasionally and it did get quite hot. It's actually a nice temperature, I like Autumn as it's still warm but not too hot like it gets in the summer. Summer is great but you can't do much outside, trying to work in that kind of heat is like trying to carry another person around all day on your shoulders.
Having it less hot meant Joe spent best part of the day tidying up outside today, he tidied the garage and the workshop AGAIN! I'd just like to know why it needs tidying so often! Has he never heard of 'a place for everything and everything in it's place'? He'll be doing it again next month, you mark my words!
Patio furniture was put away, he sprayed the inside of the house with ripcord to kill those blasted flies that keep lazily landing on you but no matter how quick you think you are, you can never swat the ruddy things! He said he did lots more, I will have to have a closer look tomorrow! ;D

Indoor renovations
The plasterer was back today, Joe helped him for a while(ooh that's another job!) putting up the coving in the TV room and lounge. The coving (the finish where the walls meet the ceiling) is up in both rooms now and the last of the plastering is done, which means it is all ready for sanding, once that is done we can then seal the walls with a special kind of paint.

TV room

Lounge

Close up of the coving

The window seat

Cider making
After a couple of days allowing the apples to steep, I took the apples out of the bucket. They hadn't softened as much as I thought so I used my stick blender and blended them to a pulp
This made extracting the juice so much easier
I left the steeping juices in the bucket, it smelled nice and appley
I added the juice from the apples which brought the liquid level up to 10 ltrs. Now that's not a huge amount of juice, it would take a lot of apples to get a reasonable about of juice to make cider, so this is why I am trying this method. I added a 3kg bag of sugar, this should make a strong cider, if all else fails I might get wine! :D
I then topped up to the 22 ltr* level with hot water, this helped to dissolve the sugar and I hope kill of any bacteria I may have introduced in the juicing process.
*I added extra because when you rack off the cider you lose about that much in the bottom of the bucket as this is where the sediment settles.

Once the temperature had cooled to the mid 20 degs C I added the cider yeast, gave it a stir, covered the bucket with a cloth and that's it for now. What should happen now is that the yeast will start doing it's job and fermenting should begin.

I have to tell you about what happened when using the press, I was turning the press and squeezing the apple pulp. I must have been a bit keen and was turning the handle a bit too quickly because the pressure caused some of the apple pulp to shoot out and went everywhere, all over the floor, all over me, in my hair and down my cleavage(never to be seen again!) and splattered up the glass doors of a wall cupboard! But what made me me laugh out loud was the amount of apple that stuck to the ceiling!

I didn't realise my kitchen would end up looking like a war zone with apple shrapnel everywhere.