Royal Wedding Fever

With only a few weeks to go the internet has been flooded with all manner of royal wedding tatt. Some of it is brilliant, some of it not so much. Personally I'm quite looking forward to it so have been trawling my favourite websites for some choice bits of merch.

Here are a few things I'd like very much:

These badges are by Folksy seller Pinch Her Cheeks

 A very tasteful tote from acceptable chintz queen Cath Kidston.

 Very cute cheeky necklace from Folksy seller Tea Please.

Gorgeous cameo necklace from the ever stylish Tatty Devine.

And something I definitely would not like very much:

A slightly too realistic Princess Catherine doll from theukgiftcompany.co.uk

And last but not least, for those of you sick of all the hype I'd advise getting one of these:

http://www.lydialeith.com/

That is all chums,

B

x

Cute pin-wheel biscuits

As may be obvious by now I'm a gal that spends a lot of time baking. Any excuse and all that... I'd been looking for a reason to test out my brand spanking new gel food colourings and on Monday one arose. I got invited to a 21st birthday night out and had no gift so stoked up the oven! (can you "stoke" a gas oven? I did anyway...)

I'd seen a recipe in a freebie supplement for some very cute little biscuits that I thought would definitely fit the bill.

And here are the finished treats:



Apologies for filtered iPhone image but I'm not a very prepared blogger!

  If you'd like to make some of your own then here is the recipe for you. I'd super advise you opt for gel food colourings like i did. The colours are so much more vibrant and didn't stain my dough pummeling hands at all. Here goes:

You will need:
100g softened butter
75g caster sugar
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp good vanilla extract
200g plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
a couple of drops of your fave food colorings. I used turquoise and "electric" purple by Americolor
100g white chocolate and sprinkles to decorate
Baking paper

How to:

• Grab your butter, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla extract and mix together by hand or with a whizzer until its smoothly combined.
• Sift in your flour until it forms a dough, if its a little dry and a splash of cold water.
• Half your dough then add cocoa powder to one half and pummell until the colour is even.
• Half again your plain dough and add your food colourings.
• Split your chocolatey dough in half and roll into a rectangle untill its about half a centimetre thick.
• Roll out one of your coloured portions untill its a similar shape and thickness and place on top of the choccie dough. Trim any excess so it's a nice tidy rectangle.
• Roll into a tight sausage and cover in baking paper the repeat with your other portions of dough.
• Pop in the fridge for about 20 minutes or until the doughy sausages are firm. You can also think about preheating your oven to gas mark 6/200 degrees.
• Once firm you can slice your sausages up, each biscuit should be about a centimetre thick. Pop them on a non stick baking tray and stick them in the oven for 20 minutes. It may help to know they didn't spread very much in the oven like some biscuits do!
• Once cool I dipped some of mine in melted white chocolate and then sprinkles but they are pretty enough on their own really.
• That's that. Easy peasy. Now enjoy them with cup of tea, or like I did with a sneaky pre-party gin...

Happy baking.
B
x

Pigeon Fancier

I've been doing a bit more stitching for my shop the last day or so to take my mind off of the job hunt and the need to become a real life grown up. It worked. Here is "Daniel" the pigeon. He's hand embroidered felt on a suitably chintzy back ground fabric.




And he's now for sale for in my Folksy shop: BUY ME!

Back to looking for a job I suppose.
Laters p'taters.

B
x

Giftage

I've really got into making my own gifts for people recently. So much so that I'll look for any excuse to do so.

A couple of weeks ago I went to visit a friend in North Wales and as a "thanks for letting me have a free holiday" gift I crafted a bit of geek-tastic awesomeness, for want of a better word. The last time I'd visited a Admiral Ackbar latex mask had pride of place hanging in the living room, so I decided to use the Admiral as inspiration. And this was the result. Chintzy sci-fi. Yes please.

While charity shopping in sunny Wales I stumbled across a pack of over a hundred used stamps. Having a pal who has recently started collecting I took it upon myself to snap them up. Today was her birthday and this is what I did with them. Got to love a bit of decoupage every now and again!

Not forgetting some grade A gift wrapping! Comics from car boots and free newpapers do good wrapping paper make.

Last but not least I went to visit this little fella.... I'm hoping pictures of cute kittens will gain me more blog followers. The internet LOVES cats!

Come on, let's hear it for the kitty! Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Over and out.
B
x