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Tuesday 20 December 2011

Joyeux Yule!

Just a quick post to say:

Merry Yule to you-all!

Yule marks the shortest day and the middle of winter, which is great because it means from here on the days get longer and lighter! Yay!
Here's a scan of a christmas card I made, it's a lino print. Anyone familiar with lino or block printing will know that everything you carve in your design will turn out back to front or mirrored, so it's important to remember to make sure all wr
iting is backwards on your lino or block! Even though I remembered this fact I still managed to screw up one of the letters, I put this down to mild dyslexia or maybe just not concentrating hard enough (I always did have a problem with capital 'N's), unfortunately I'm not young enough to give this card to relatives and have them think it's cute that I've made a mistake, oh well I still it came out quite well despite this.



Tuesday 13 December 2011

Blue Macaroons

Did you know that the French word for Macaroon actually translates roughly to English as: 'Tiny pain in the ass"? Ha ha, no! No, of course it doesn't. But they are a pain in the ass to make. But if you get it right, they taste delicious. I have made them before, but this time I made them with electric scales, these are essential in making a good macaroon. Before when I made them I couldn't quite achieve that light meringue texture, it could have also been recipe I used. This time around I used Lorraine Pascal's recipe..Here.


Things I learned are...you need more food colouring than you think, I must have used about 1 tablespoon or more and their still quite pale. Make sure everything is very dry when you're mixing- water will make the mixture heavy. When you do the melting the sugar bit in the recipe, heat it real slow and put as much water as you need to make all the sugar wet, add more than the recipe says if it doesn't make all the sugar wet- this bit for me was the most annoying. I filled mine with just plain whipped cream, you could make a fancy ganache or flavour the cream if you wanted but plain cream works well as a more refreshing and simple filling as the macaroons themselves are very sweet.

Also, because you will end up with a few egg yolks, a good easy thing to make from them is Lemon Curd! I used Delia's recipe. Instead of using whole eggs I just used the yolks I had left, it seems to work just as well. Lemon curd is basically a kind of lemon custard without milk and with loooads of sugar. But it's easy peasy (lemon squeezy...sorry) and could make a nice christmas present!


They're so pretty and took such an effort to make, I needed to give them their own photoshoot, before scoffing them.

Sunday 11 December 2011

St George the patron of the Horse

Have you seen my cape? Here it is. I love my cape. It has big buttons like coins with a picture of St George on a horse and the latin words 'S Georgius equitum patronus', which google translate says means 'St George the patron on the horse', nice touch.



I feel very smart or posh when I wear it. The only problem is that it's hard to wear a bag with it, even a shoulder bag is difficult, it kind of gets stuck and gathered in the fabric. Oh, well I should try to travel light when I wear my cape anyway... so I can fly! ha!



Friday 9 December 2011

Collected from the ether

I've thought about making a regular post showing all those things, ideas, pictures, recipes, films etc. that you come across over a period of time (like a month). I've seen a lot of other bloggers doing this and I always enjoy seeing the collections of things they've found or have been doing. I'd like to think of title a bit more creative than 'collected from the ether' but I'm sure I can go back and change this if I think of something better.

So here's what I've seen....

I love this idea for making a wreath, you could maybe spray paint one or two of the succulents in metallic paint to make it more christmassy, but it's still a lovely house decoration.


Photo from Honestlywtf.com

These shoes from asos, perfectly elegant with a touch of extravagance, good for the 'party' season, whatever that means...I just like them, but they've ran out of my size!




This explanation of why cats behave...like cats:


Source unknown


This ring from etsy shop Moon Raven Designs - actually I've had my eyes on this for ages.

Bronze chameleon lizard ring - Moon Raven Designs on etsy


This lovely lady has such clever diy's and only started her blog less than a year ago.



Have got round to watching True Grit, after all the hoo-ha and oscar blah-de-blah, not a bad movie, most Cohen brothers films are decent.


True Grit

After watching True Grit, I was reminded of this post of 'teen blog' Rookie. Which I quite enjoyed.. it does seem like these kids nowadays are basically interested in the same things that were going on when I was a kid...ha! I sound old. But actually it's quite an interesting blog, the young writers are very capable (probably more capable than me) at writing interesting and relevant topics for young ladies growing up in the modern western world.

Screenshot of Rookiemag.com


Thursday 8 December 2011

Stripes and Boots

I've been playing with Piknik and even though these photo effects I'm using give that typically overused vintage quality, I do quite like it, I think it just takes the 'edge' off the image, literally of course, y'know with the rounded edges - haha! But also it makes it a bit more fuzzy and makes them look like more distant, like they've been taken by someone else and they're even of someone else. Do you know what? They just make things look better!




As money grows thinner, (living in London is quite an adjustment, not having a full time job is an even bigger one). I've been looking at selling or re-vamping some of items in my wardrobe. I've also been enjoying visiting the local flea market in which there is an awesome shop that has things priced waaay too temptingly. I've got to reign that it, but I have managed to find a few things there that have fulfilled some of my cravings at a much lower price. I got these DM's for just £15! I had been looking for some DM's to replace my existing DM's that are a bit too big, so now I can sell my old ones, it's a good cycle. I also bought this sweater and a great wool shirt £7 for both! Like I said I still need to ease off the buying. This is where I turn to chopping or altering my existing wardrobe. The skirt..it used to be longer, now it needs hemming though.