Wonderbag? Wondertea!

So like I said the other day, at the Caravan and Camping (or whatever it was called) show, we bought a Wonderbag.
The woman we got it from was very chatty, very helpful, and very clear about how good these are. They are made of material and some are filled with polystyrene, and some aren't. Ours isn't. It's full of foam chips, which are recycled.  There's more technical details on their website, here.












So first I had to find a suitable sized pot.
Then I made casserole the way I usually would.



It needs to be made in a pot with a tight fitting lid.
Then it goes into the Wonderbag.  I put mine in on a teatowel.  I'm very good at spilling things sometimes, and I do not want to mark this!






The 'lid' goes on top of the pot, and then the drawstring is drawn up tight.
Then it's just left on the kitchen side.  For real.  Just left.  This is the slightly difficult bit for me, because I want to poke what I'm cooking.  If I was to open the bag, then it wouldn't work, because the whole point is that it is a massive insulating bag.
This isn't a new idea - hayboxes and the like have been made for centuries, but this is great.  Not only does it match the colour of the glorious Brian, (although it is reversible, should we every get a grey camper....)
Obviously the big question is "Does it work?"  Well, I'll let you know in about 4 hours.....


update!

It was six o'clock in the end before we got around to eating tea. It had been in the Wonderbag for just under 5 hours. It was gorgeous! It was fairly hot, everything was cooked through nicely (although the carrots could have done with a bit longer according to the man) and even the meat was tender and juicy.

Now, the man tells me that this is Not a cooking blog, and so I'm Not to talk lots about cooking. So I won't. Probably.

Anyway, the upshot of the wonderbag is that it was great! Loved it! (An Wonderbag don't know I'm writing about them, so I don't have to say that!)

Now to stick cartoon pieces on the fridge!

Fridge-tastic!

Over the last few weeks we have tracked fridges on eBay. We've watched them, bid on them, and seen them go at the last second when someone had had a bidbot to bid for them.

But this time .......... We WON!!!



It's very tidy, and works well. Chap had it running when we got there to pick it up, and it was still really cold when we got home 3hours later. That means the seals are good!

It's a Dometic rm2262, (and if anyone had a manual in English, that would be great - we downloaded one in Norwegian....) and it is bigger than your average campervan fridge, but that suits us. It has meant some changes in the way that we had thought about having our interior.

We have now gone back to the plan that we both liked in the first place! We're not going to put a hob in, because one of the coolest points (for me) about Brian has always been the cooker under the front seat. It's there - so we are going to use it. That just means installing a sink an the fridge. Obviously we'll have to change the gas piping because we don't know how old it is, and you can't muck about with gas. Bad things happen when you take risks with gas!

We ended up going over to Norwich for a few bits, and went to Drayton Caravans and the chap there was really helpful, tried our gas fittings to check they were the right kind, and was very reasonably priced. It's a fair way for us, but we'd go there again!

So that was this weekend! And it's half term this week, so I promise I'll get that Caravan and Camping Spending Spree post done!

Slider door done and dusted!

So this is 4 nights work. 2 hours to stick cartoons in the right places. (Should we get out more? Nope. This is for Brian!)



We finished it tonight. The PVA on the back was dry and so.......




...... Yep. We fitted it at 10:45 at night. I mean, why not!




It took two of us to fit it as the door card needed supporting whilst the screws were put in. The door handle was remove to make the job easier, and then put back.




It's up! Looking good!




It also slides, which is important in a sliding door.




A quick pic showing the passenger and sliding door cards. You can also see the very red seat belt that has been fitted to the drivers side. The passenger side is still waiting.....

But now it's bedtime.

Night night world.

Night night Brian!

Motorhome and Camping show.

Sooooooo tired.

Six hours of walking around the Motorhome and Caravan Show at the NEC Birmingham.

Six hours.

But at the same time, it was easy to get tickets to, easy to get to, easy to park at, easy to walk into, incredibly expensive to eat and drink at (so we took sandwiches this year) and had some good stuff.

There will be a proper post about Good Stuff tomorrow. We spent a fair bit, but I want to be able to get the web links to everyone's pages.

Top part of the day was watching the discovery of just how cool QR codes are by the child. He's had a tough week, but he loved today because he could point the phone at a square of black and white spots and it would go straight to a website! How exciting is that!

Obviously there are no photos of the joy of this discovery, as he had the phone to do the reader thing.

Anyway Brian has loads of new stuff. Photos tomorrow. I'm KNACKERED!


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More cutting

There is more cutting out being done.




Why?




Because now we're on the slider door. This one is hardboard and was already in place, but uncovered.

And it's massive.......

Finally finished the door cards! (Well sort of....)

Right, the epic door card post!

We started off with blanks, bought from the Vanfest, for £25 a pair.  They are predrilled MDF.

This is a blank, with the clips from the old door card already clipped in.  They were a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.  The clips were fairly new, showing that Brian has had some work done before.  His original door cards were a beige vinyl, and are fine, just Not For Us.

So anyway, back to the "What We Did."

We put the clips in, then covered each clip with a square of folded over masking tape.  This was to stop the papers sticking to the clips.  The second time we didn't do it, and I'm pretty sure we regret that now!

We then went over the masking tape with fabric tape.  On the second one, we went over the clips with just a strip of masking tape.  The jury is still out on which one is the best.

Then the cutting began.  We had sourced a whole load of comics from eBay, all Dandy or Beano, and the whole family got involved with cutting out the individual cells from the comic strips.  We weren't fussed on size or shape, for obvious reasons - they were all getting over laid anyway!

We laid them all out to see if we had enough.  We didn't bother doing this with the second one as we could tell we had enough.  With the first one though, we just wanted to be sure, so that we didn't get halfway across the board, and just not have enough!

We stuck them all down.  We used 2/3 PVA to 1/3 water, and then dolloped a little bit more glue in, just to make sure.

Once we'd stuck them all down, we put 2 coats of PVA over the top to seal them and to put a bit of shine over the top.  Same proportions as before.

Then we fitted them to the door.  Immediately, we knew we'd done the right thing!

Obviously, we then had to repeat almost everything, in order to put one on both sides!   This side is the drivers side.

And here it is finished!  Each one takes about 3 nights, we've decided.

We have had to do some trimming, because the window winders wouldn't slip straight on.  Unfortunately, we had to Dremel Dennis the Menace's head a bit, but he won't mind.  However, the window winder for this side wouldn't just slip on, so is at a mates house to be reamed out a millimetre or so.

One of the favourite sections for the boy!

The passenger side winder hole also needed Dremelling out a bit, and then fitted straight on without any hassle.

Now there's just the sliding door card to go.  The Man is already cutting out, and I must join him.  Laters people!

Window winders

Over the last couple of days, the world has been all about these.


Brian's new window winders for the front doors.



The winders themselves came from C&C when we went to Vanfest 2012. We bashed the black knobs off with a hammer and fitted skateboard wheels and bearings.

It sounds easy like that, but there was a bit of fiddle finding the right bolts, washers and nuts, and then getting them cut to the right length. All that remains is to mount them on the door card!

Brake lights? Who needs them?

Well Brian does apparently!

On our way back from a swift trip to Newmarket to collect a phone, we were slowly overtaken by a car. This is a common occurrence when driving a bay, as people like to take a good (if a little jealous) look.

However, from the hand gestures and frantic mouthing of the passenger, we surmised that it wasn't to tell us how great Brian was looking that day, but was to let us know that we had no brake lights. We had some way to go still, so J decided that the way out of this was to pull the lights on as he applied the brakes in order to warn the car behind.

We got home, pulled out the Haines, the Internet, and phoned The Mark.

Brian needs a new switch. Now all we have to do is find one and fit one! However we've been distracted by doing something with these......




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