Beetroot Cake...

Since we've been having vegetable boxes delivered to us from these folks, we've found we quite often have bits and pieces which we wouldn't normally buy, or we're not quite sure what to make with. This led to one of my new favourite games being born, google dinner, where you simply pop into google the ingredients you have to hand and find a whole array of wonderful recipes using them.

Well when it came to googling beetroot, the recipe I found most was definitely beetroot cake, mostly chocolate beetroot cake, but I did find a couple of basic just beetroot cake. 'What a wonderful idea' I thought, 'just like carrot cake'.

As it happened I had all the ingredients I needed at hand for this recipe (which coincidentally is from the same website that we get our veg from). So as Milo was napping I set about baking.

It was lots of fun, mostly for the wonderful pink juice that bled pretty much everywhere! And it was a very easy recipe. Once in the oven it started to smell fantastic, and then, well, it started to just smell a little weird!

It came out well, to look it, and is pretty much the perfect cake consistency, lovely and light and moist, but, well, it just doesn't taste that great! It's not bad, we'll probably manage to eat it all between the two of us, after all cake is cake, but I certainly won't be making it again. Maybe I'll try the chocolate variety next time.

Herbs in pots one week on...

Growing anything from seed is just about one of the most exciting things!! Especially if, like these little beauties, they are quick to give you aesthetic rewards.

I'm quite tempted to create a little space especially devoted to the housing a growing of various herbs and plants that will be happy indoors.

A New Blog...

...I have started a new blog over here. It is about my adventures on becoming a mama.

I'm using typepad, to be honest at the moment I'm not that all that sure I'm totally impressed by it, but we'll see how I get on, and maybe if it works I'll transfer this little blog over there too. I'll be sure to keep you informed.

xx

Books and Bread...

I got some wonderful new books for my birthday (some as gifts from others and some as gifts from myself!)

'Totally Simple Food' by Jill Dupleix

'Apples for Jam' by Tessa Kiros

'Handmade' by Ros Badger and Elspeth Thompson
'The Creative Family' by Amanda Blake Soule (not pictured as it is currently residing on my bedside table)
I'm loving them all...so much wonderful inspiration, some of which can be seen below.  

I made this white milk loaf from 'Apples for Jam' (I've wanted this book for such a very long time)...and for pretty much the first time in my bread making attempts it actually came out pretty well.

It was a little sweet because it has honey in it, so it was super delicious with jam (and I hate to admit it, chocolate spread) but next time I may experiment with skipping the honey, or only adding a very small amount.

Growing...

...herbs in pots...

I painted these pots at my mums shop on my last trip home and she kindly brought them up with her for my surprise birthday visit. The herbs I planted at the beginning of the year were transferred outside and have either been eaten by giant slugs or just not made it!

...my little green monster...

who just wants to sit or stand (or a combination of the two) all the time! He's growing up so quickly...he learns something new every day...amazing!

Excuses for absences....

Oh I have been a very naughty absent blogger the past week, and as for crafting 365...well I am failing terribly!

So what is my excuse? It was my birthday on Tuesday, and just as I had finished putting Milo down for his morning nap on Monday, there was a knock on the door, I was expecting the postman but when I opened the door I discovered two very lovely little girls (my nieces) my mum and my sister!!  They had driven all the way down from Norfolk to surprise me!!  It was a good job I was in!

Then of course Tuesday itself was full of birthday loveliness provided by my super wonderful boys and my first night out without the smallest of them since he was born!!

As for the other 5/6 days I missed, well...I was just slack I guess!!

So today I shall be updating a few of my crafting 365 days, but not all of them I'm afraid to say, and tomorrow I am off to Cambridge for the weekend, so more blogging shall no doubt be missed, but I will try my hardest to achieve some crafting on those days.

Happy Friday xxx

Exciting times....

Happy Monday. I have a couple of exciting things to share with you all this morning (well exciting for me anyway!).

Firstly I am featured in this months 'Make Jewellery Magazine'. There are lots of lovely projects using polymer clay beads, which is great.

Secondly, the lovely El and Bex have offered to sell my work in their beautiful little shop. I'm going down on Thursday to set up a little space. I've never sold my goods in real life before only ever online, so I'm super excited!

Things in general are going really well at the moment, how could they not be, when I have such a gorgeous good luck charm!

Organising and helpful little hands...

So I haven't really done so well with my crafting 365, I'm only 2 weeks in and have already lost 4 days!! I will try harder, promise!

I've mostly been organising and tidying my many crafty bits and pieces, to create an area that is easier to work in when I have such limited time.

This morning we've mostly been putting beads into saleable sets. I say we as I've had a little helper sat upon my knee, when I say helper I really mean distractor and chaos creator! Those little hands were very cute, until he swept a whole load of beads off the table and onto the floor. Oh how he laughed!! I have enough of a problem keeping the beads off the floor when using my own clumsy hands!


All that hard work really wore him out though...

Baking and a Birthday...

...I may have been a bit rubbish at keeping up with my crafting 365 the last couple of days but that's because we've been a bit busy here. My poor little boy had his second round of jabs on Monday, he was super brave and it was much less emotional for me second time around, but he was still a grumpy babe for the rest of the day. When he wasn't sleeping (in my arms, wouldn't stay down in his cot) he was screaming! It wasn't much fun, but I know how important it is for him to have them and it's only one day.

Over the weekend I made some crumbles with some fruit which otherwise would have ended up in the bin. Unfortunately we have great intentions and buy ourselves loads of fruit, but so rarely do we manage to consume it all before it turns. So to save waste I've started to try and put it to good (although not as healthy) use.

Then as it is Johnny's birthday today, yesterday I knocked up a cheesecake. I say knocked up as though it was the easiest thing in the world! It wasn't!! I've never made a cheesecake before and it's Johnny's favourite thing, so I dug out a Nigella recipe for chocolate cheesecake and headed out to get the ingredients super early. Milo went down for his afternoon nap and I got on with the baking, all was going well until I got the part that said 'add the sour cream', err what sour cream? Somehow I had managed to completely miss that part of the ingredient list!! As Milo was sound asleep there was little I could do but put everything to one side and wait. At 4 o'clock we headed out to quickly grab the sour cream, well the shops of Cheltenham obviously don't feel that it is important stock to have, because after trying all the nearest and slightly further afield shops I ended up miles (well sort of) away at waitrose, who did supply me with what I needed. Having thought we were only popping out Milo was safely snuggled against me in his sling when it started to rain and got heavier and heavier!!! So we returned home an hour later soaked to the skin!!

With the cheesecake finally assembled it appeared from the oven just as Johnny returned from work, so birthday surprise slightly ruined but hey ho.

However, although it looks like a rather unappetising quiche, it tastes lovely, and I'm glad I went to all that effort so my lovely boy could have his favourite dessert for pre-birthday and also birthday celebrations.

Little fingers and toes...

I'm going to try not to become all about posting photos of my lovely new babe, but to be fair it is about the only thing going on in my life at the moment! So until life begins to settle down and I find time for more crafting (will there ever be time again?!) here are some more pictures of my newest favourite person.


xxxxxxxxxxx

Introducing....

Milo Darwin Thom Patterson-Brown

He was born quite unexpectedly and quickly on the 7th April at 8.54am weighing 7lb 3oz.

We are all very well, healthy and happy, if not a little tired! I'll probably be absent or sporadic in posting over the next few weeks as we continue to become accustomed to each other and enjoy these first few special moments.

More pictures here.

xxx

Starting to rest and prepare...

As my due date draws nearer, I'm starting to finally realise what is happening! Yes it's true in approximately 3 weeks and 2 days I will be having a baby a real life little person to look after! As a result I probably won't be around that much over the following few weeks...I do seem to have a renewed energy recently, but it's more focused on cleaning and tidying and doing selfish things for myself! I may also be slower to respond to messages, I'll still be about checking in and reading other's blogs, I just may be a little more laid back and slow!

There are so many different feelings and emotions you go through when you are pregnant...it truly is as many will tell you a 'rollercoaster', if I tried to list them all it would take all day...but I'm happy to say that at the moment the main feeling I have is one of a calm, thoughtful, relaxful state.

I have a few pictures to share with you of yet another baby blanket!



It's still a work in progress, that like most things I'm working on slowly and thoughtfully. I'm using Rowan Calmer yarn (the website is down and the moment so I can't post a link) which is 90% cotton and 10% polyester, it's not the softest yarn in the world but it's quite thick and chunky (although that may partly be down to the stitch I'm using).

The stripey hoodie I posted about last week is so so close to completion now...all that's left is for me to stitch on some buttons. I'll post pictures of it in all it's glory when it is truly finished.

Happy Monday xxx

Chocolate and Baby Blankets...

I'm still working on a baby blanket a started a million years ago (well maybe not that long ago, but all the way back here anyway), I knitted up the squares, but well they are not the squarest of squares so I begun to edge them in crochet and then kind of forgot about them! That is until yesterday when Johnny said I was absolutely not allowed to begin on anything else for the baby until that blue blanket was finished! He can be such a meany sometimes. So anyway I continue to edge those squares I did.

All was going well until I discovered that I hadn't started out with white and two shades of blue, but an off-white creamy colour and 2 shades of blue!!! I was distraught but Johnny pulled me through my anguish and attempted to tell me it didn't matter...I'm still not sure it doesn't look a bit silly as the original creamy yarn used in the main blocks looks slightly yellow when positioned next to the more recently purchased white which lines the dark blue, but hey ho, these silly mistakes seem to happen more and more in my pregnant state!

They're still not attached to each other but they are ready to be!! Now only to decide how to do it and in what colour...that could well take another 3 months at least!!

On a completely unrelated note I made the most ridiculously chocolately chocolate cookies on Friday, they are amazing, but the fact that we still have some of the 12 I baked left just goes to show you how intensly chocolately they are!

They are from this book I picked up at a bargain price many years ago, I have made these triple chocolate cookies before but think I forgot how insanely rich they really are! The recipe calls for 90g of milk chocolate 90g of white chocolate and 300g of dark chocolate!!! I didn't even use that much, as I couldn't find any white chocolate that wasn't nestle I used 150g of milk chocolate and as 300g of dark chocolate just seemed crazy I only used 200g!

I indulged in them still warm with some hot chocolate and family tree investigating on Friday afternoon, and lovely it was indeed!

Happy Sunday all...I'm probably going to go and sleep a lot...after weeks of complete inability to sleep due to kicking, overheating and being purely uncomfortable, my body seems to have developed an ability to ignore all these things and has decided all I really need to do is sleep, it could sleep all day and all night if I let it. xxx

A New Rug...

I'm a very very very happy girl indeed as yesterday my lovely man bought for me this lovely rug...
It came from Habitat and I had lusted over it for quite some time, well since I was promised a new rug for our lounge at christmas time. I couldn't decide on it for a while because it was little on the expensive side, but after too many evenings of lying on the cold floorboards in an attempt to get comfortable we finally decided to get it. Johnny even had to carry it the whole way home for me!

Here is a picture of it in situ, although the light in our lounge really is terrible...

And to prove that I didn't spend all day admiring my new rug here are some pictures of the little embroidery sampler you can see down there...

I've just been playing around with different types of stitches, as all I ever seem to do it the regular old back stitch, and as I have a whole book full of different types I thought I'd give it a go.

Happy Weekend xxx

Snow...

As anyone in Britain will know...we had a little bit of snow this week. Although it was quite a lot for us it really wasn't all that much, but did cause quite a lot of chaos, as it always does.

I still had to trudge to work in the slushy icy mess everyday, which wasn't much fun, but wasn't the end of the world. I did fall over on Friday, which was a bit rubbish....I got very very wet and had to trudge back home to get changed! But the most important thing is that the baby seems perfectly happy despite being knocked about once again (think he may be born with bruises!)

Unfortunately I made the mistake most mornings of thinking "I'll take photos on my lunch break" well there never was any snow left by lunchtime, certainly not any you'd really want to take photos of. As a result my photos are pretty boring shots of my journey to work on Friday (before I fell over that is!), but I thought I'd share them none the less.

Happy Sunday...I think I'm going to have a go at making some of these lovelies today...wish me luck!!! xx

Oh Christmas Tree...

When I got back from work on Sunday there was the sweetest (and quite tiny) Christmas tree waiting for me, still wrapped up and crying out to be decorated!

So here he is. I can't really get any great pictures because of the light, but I can assure you that it looks fantastic, very traditional. And every single decoration that adorns his branches was hand made by myself of Johnny which makes it even more special.

Last time we were up visiting my Mum we painted this in her shop.

I hope that it's a tradition we keep up adding a new one to our collection each year...obviously next year there will be little fingers helping us to paint one!

I also made these little stars from some decopatch...

Johnny made some paper chains...

It's made me a very happy girl, I've never had my own REAL Christmas tree before it smells wonderful and looks fabulous, all the gifts are wrapped and carefully placed under it's branches...I am so very very excited now!

The postman did not come yesterday...

He did not bring me my black apple christmas cards, or my moo stickers and he most certainly did not bring me amelia's magazine. I know that is nearing christmas and I must learn to be patient with the postman...he probably is very busy, but one of the few things to do when you are stuck at home poorly sick is order things on the internet and wait for them to arrive. Plus I've been so busy internet shopping that I've kinda gotten used to a package (at least) everyday!

I suppose there is a plus side to all of this I did manage to produce these...

Something that probably wouldn't have happened had my lovely magazine arrived.

Anyhow enough of my moaning...I must be off got lots of parcels to post...hopefully the postman will be nicer and quicker with those than he has been with mine!

Don't forget it's buy one get one FREE in my shop all weekend.

xx