The school holidays are finally here and it’s a good idea to start thinking about how to keep excited children (who am I kidding? and us adults too!) occupied on the run up to Christmas. One of my favourite things to do over the festive period is a Christmas movie
As it’s the last Pieday Friday before Christmas, I thought I’d share a couple of festive recipes to kick-start your yuletide baking – gingerbread cookies and Christmas morning muffins. The first is a very traditional recipe for making gingerbread men, but here I have used cookie cutters from Wholeport to cut out
This week I have been in the kitchen making my very own stash of preserves ready for the winter. But I’m not only making them for my family’s table, I am also making a few jars to give to my foodie friends as gifts! I’ve had a huge harvest of
This week is Cassiefairy’s birthday and to celebrate I’ve baked a cake for a little birthday celebration I’m having in my little vintage caravan. I wanted to break from tradition and avoid my usual victoria sponge cake this year (even though it is my favourite) so I thought about making a
Last week I shared my inspiration for creating a pink and red themed birthday party. I usually forget all about my birthday in the excitement of the run-up to Christmas, so this year I’ve made an effort to mark the occasion with a little party in my little vintage caravan.
A few weeks ago I shared my recipe for using apples and blackberries to create a flavoured vodka and this got me thinking about creating other types of fruit flavoured alcohol using my hedgerow finds. The first and most obvious choice was to make sloe gin and after a rummage through
A couple of weeks ago, one of my closest friends and blogger-extraordinaire Jenna from Glitter Daze blog came to stay with me and we has a fantastic time going on little trips, taking snaps for our blogs and getting stuck into craft projects so that we would have plenty of DIY tutorials
It’s that time of year again to make your own Christmas cake. Even though I know I can buy a cheap fruit cake from the supermarket and decorate it for Christmas, I love making my own cake and knowing exactly what yummy ingredients have gone into it – so I know
This week, when hubby had a half-day off work, I cooked us both a yummy soup for lunch. It’s definitely the time of year that I want to have something warm to eat at lunchtime (there was actually frost on the ground here this week!) so I looked up recipes for
Today’s recipe post is another which focuses on apples. To say that mum had a lot of apples on her tree is an understatement and they all needed using or preserving. As you know, last week I made apple and blackberry jam (here’s the recipe), and a flavoured vodka (which
This month’s Inspiration Challenge theme was ‘apples’ and luckily enough I’ve since been given loads of apples from my mother’s apple tree which had bumper-crop this year. So I had a think about what I really wanted to make (after crumbles, of course!) and the answer was blackberry and apple jam. So I
It’s Halloween today and I wanted to show off the cool pumpkin that hubby and I carved yesterday. Upon the recommendation of my friend-with-children, I bought this 3 piece pumpkin carving kit from The Factory Shop. It was already reduced to £1 when I bought it and that was a couple
It’s Halloween this week and as usual I don’t have any budget for a costume for all those parties I’ll be going to. But I’m not worried about that because I personally think that Halloween is about making-do and creating some crazy costume yourself that no one else will be wearing –
Now that we’re heading towards the end of October, I think it’s okay for me to start talking about making cakes for your Halloween party! Even if you’re not having a Halloween party for the little ‘uns, maybe you can make these little cakes for the trick-or-treaters, or just make
Today I am again following in the dainty footsteps of my friend and blogger La Vie Sophie and am blogging about what I’ve been up to this week.
One of the many reasons why I’m so busy at the moment, is that I’ve just started a course. You may remember I mentioned it last week and that I’d said only the week before that I’m definitely NOT studying anything this year! But a course on branding caught my
I’ve been out picking apples this week – they are perfectly ripe and ready to be included in one of my Pieday Friday recipes. I think we can officially call it autumn now, and I want to celebrate this by making a cake that is spiked with festive spices and includes the
A couple of Fridays ago I shared my first attempt at making cake-pops with you and I hope you’ve since had a go at making them for yourselves. I did the stick-two-halves-together method of cake-pop making, using a silicone cake-pop tray from Dunelm Mill. If you remember, I had to
It’s the start of a new term, and for some of you, that means a new university, new college and moving away from home. It’s a busy time of year and you’ll be all-over the place, meeting new people, finding your way around and enjoying the fun times that university
I know were hovering at the start of Autumn but I wanted to share this unseasonably summery recipe for a peach cooler drink. The weather reports are promising that it’ll be warmer over this coming weekend and I’m planning a couple of days away so I’m in the holiday mood!
This week I decided to try out a new piece of silicone bakeware that I got from Dunelm Mill – a cake-pop tray. I’ve seen lots of tutorials online for making cake pops and felt like I was missing out on a big cake-baking trend, so I decided to give
The summer holidays are drawing to a close, but that means there are lots of pretty fed up children around! Here’s an idea for a fun activity that you can do with your children to stop the boredom and entertain them during the last couple of weeks of the school holidays. This is
My brother gave me this beautiful unicorn cookie-cutter for Christmas. I know it’s a bit lame to admit it, but I’ve only just got round to using trying out and we’re already 6 months into the year! Oh well, at least I’ve made some unicorn biscuits now and my bro
The ombre trend – two colours blending together – is everywhere this summer. It started with ombre hair, with many women choosing dark roots blending into blonde tips, and I love how this makes hair look naturally sunkissed for summer. Now the trend is being reflected in clothing, with the ‘dip dye’ effect appearing around the bottom
This weekend I’ve been enjoying watching all the bands and soaking up the atmosphere of Glastonbury. But I’m not forking out for a ticket, I’m not travelling 200 miles and I’m not hanging around in a muddy field. I’ve created my own mini-festival experience in the comfort of my own home –
Just a quick recipe today – and when I say quick, I mean 60 seconds! When you really fancy a cake in a rush, this is the easiest recipe to satisfy your craving within minutes. Just grab a cup, mix together the following ingredients and zap for 60 seconds in
It was hubby’s birthday a few of weekends ago (you may have read my blog post about this awesome Lego present I got for him!) and instead of baking him a birthday cake, I decided to make a whole load of cupcakes. This was for a couple of reasons: Firstly,
I received a surprise treat in the post from my fabulous fairy friend Jenna the other day. She sent me a lovely card and a nail art brush, with a note saying she thought it might help for my beauty blog posts. Such a lovely surprise and a reminder of what
This week I arrived home after a hard days work to find a massive box on my doorstep. The arrival of a parcel is always exciting and it was especially great today as this was a delivery of flowers from Debenhams. I am baffled how a bunch of flowers can be sent through
Any excuse to make a sweet treat eh? And Easter is the perfect time to make something sweet for the family over this 4-day weekend.
This is officially my favourite drink. In my world, a sours cocktail cannot be beaten and I love amaretto too. So this recipe for an amaretto sours cocktail is my idea of heaven. Here’s how I mixed up these yummy drinks and you can see from the photo that we enjoyed these drinks
At the weekend I went shopping for a few office supplies and amongst my basket of envelopes, parcel bags and pencils was a pack of chunky permanent marker pens. Now, I spend a lot of time on Pinterest, (I’ve just been invited to join this nail art bloggers group eek my nails
I took a bit of time over the weekend to try out an idea for getting pretty heart-shapes onto my nails ready for Valentine’s Day. I snapped some pics of the process and I’ve created a bit of a DIY tutorial for making your manicure a little bit more romantic
This week I’ve baked some cute cupcakes and now I’m blogging the photos so you can have a go yourself at baking these afternoon-tea treats for the weekend. These cupcakes look pretty standard (although I did take a long time decorating them because I was trying out my new piping
As the murky month of January finally starts drawing to a close we can all start looking forward to the rest of the year; it’s already one month closer to our summer holidays, a couple of months to the chocolate delights of Easter and only a couple of weeks until Valentine’s day.
If you’re having a gathering for New Years Eve, be it a small family ‘do’ or a huge party with friends, you’ll be guaranteed to be serving and enjoying a few drinks during the evenings celebrations. You’ll need a selection of soft drinks, the odd lager and bottle of wine, but the
Of course, I couldn’t allow myself to get much closer to Christmas without posting a mince pie recipe for Pieday Friday and I’ve been baking a selection of mince pies this week, trying out different recipes and pastry effects. There’s no rules for mince pies and the prettier you can make them, the
This weekend I went to the Christmas Lights switch on event in our nearby town and this had become a bit of a festive tradition for our family in recent years. I happened to be shopping in the town when they were installing their Christmas lights this year so I got a sneaky peek at
After my trip to the Maple Farm produce shop last weekend saw me bringing home a locally-grown butternut squash, I decided that the best way for me to cook the squash was to roast it and turn it into a tasty smooth soup. So I followed the farmer’s instructions to scrub
I have decided to go all glittery for bonfire night and create a firework effect on my nails. I began with Opia Nail Laquer from Primark in a sparkly midnight blue. The bottle recommends applying two coats but this polish was so thin that I needed at least 3 coats to get
To create a cute pumpkin look for Halloween, and also for the upcoming bonfire night celebrations (I think my nails look a bit like a bonfire, no?), I tried out the new glitter varnish that I ordered last week from Avon. I painted a couple of coats of no 27 Orange
On a (British) holiday earlier this month, I had my first ever Sno-kone! And it has quickly become my new favourite. I found this classic American treat in a retro sweet shop called The Sweet Hut in the seaside town of Felixstowe in Suffolk. It’s the kind of kooky shop
I’ve tried out a new nail polish this week from Boots 17 range – yes the bargain range that my little sister prefers – and the most funky colour palette. The 17 range is great at bringing out the season’s most fashionable make-up shades and I chose this candy lilac
I love to bake, and whenever there’s a birthday in my family I’d usually bake a sweet spongy cake or a tray full of butterfly cupcakes to celebrate the occasion. However, last week was my lovely sister’s birthday and I wanted to make something special for her, but she has a
Hubby recently went away on business to Germany and for the first time, I wasn’t able to go with him (my passport has expired – have I really had it that long?). So I stayed at home and patiently awaited his return. I was excited to see his ‘holiday snaps’,
I saw this recipe in Heat magazine and it looked pretty nice, so I whipped some sausages out of the freezer, I already had some Philadelphia in the fridge (on offer at the Co-op at the moment only £1, so I got the original, chives and chocolate versions) and I
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