Old phone boxes and daffodils

Last weekend the boyfriend and I went for our usual walk around Warren Hill in West Sussex, we go there fairly often and always seem to take a similar route through the woodland – just out of habit. But this time we decided to turn left instead of right and were surprised with daffodils, and old phone box and my new favourite village sign, proving that sometimes it’s good to change your routine!

It was also a chance to test out my finished knitted fingerless gloves, which I'll show you soon. I hope you all have a fantastic Easter weekend!

Cadburys creme egg cookies – a recipe

Well, I’ve given in and jumped on the baking with Cadburys creme eggs bandwagon. After seeing so many delicious looking recipes all over the internet it was bound to happen at sooner or later, these creme egg brownies and some creme egg cupcakes looked particularly good. But to be a bit different I thought I’d try creme egg cookies and rather than using normal creme eggs I used mini creme eggs and creme egg splats (no I hadn’t heard of them either but they were on offer in tescos). Hopefully these aren’t too bad for you and they taste so, so good.

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees (160 for fan oven)
Mix 100g margarine with 100g of brown muscovado sugar.

Add 1 tablespoon of golden syrup.

Add 150g self-raising flour and mix together.

Add half a pack of creme egg splats, or a few mini creme eggs chopped into quarters to the mixture.
Separate into small balls and place onto a baking tray. Cut mini creme eggs into halves and push gently into the top on each cookie.

Bake for around 8 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve on a pretty plate and try not to eat all of them at once.

The soundtrack to my baking yesterday morning was Now that’s what I call Disney - perfect for dancing around the kitchen to!

Why I blog – guest post

I’m guest posting over at Sally’s lovely blog Queenie and the Dew today taking part in her ‘why I blog’ series, talking about why I started blogging and the things I’ve learned as a result. So I hope you’ll head over and have a read.

Feather book page bookmark – a how to

I mentioned my re-kindled love for books a few weeks ago and have since come to the conclusion that my bookmark, a tissue, just wasn’t good enough. So I decided to make one using pages from an old book, I chose a feather shape (what else) and I’m really pleased with how it came out! I used a cocktail stick as the stem, middle, quill... not sure what the technical term is, but the middle bit anyway and sandwiched a piece of card between the pages to make it more sturdy. The hardest bit was tearing the pages out of the book – I was half expecting someone to come and tell me off, it felt very wrong.

                                                                                            
You will need:
One old book
A cocktail stick
Cardboard
PVA glue

Firstly, and this is the messiest bit - mix your PVA glue with a bit of water and roll your cocktail stick in part of a page. Cover all of it in the watery glue, both the side facing the cocktail stick and the outside. You’ll only need a tiny scrap of page in order to cover the stick, if you use too much it will be too thick and loose its pointy end. Once the stem is dry place half of it on the card or wherever you want the feathery bit of your feather to start. Glue to the card then glue another book page on top. Leave to dry.

If you want your bookmark double sided then glue a second page onto the back of the white card.
One everything is dry you can draw on your feather and cut out.

So much better than a tissue! 

A very colourful visit to Wakehurst Place

It’s funny how things turn out isn’t it, I spent Sunday getting excited over neon orange branches, yellow trees and other (almost) spring colour, and yet today the colour of winter/spring appears to be white. Yes, snow white to be precise. Again.

So to remind us all that the white stuff won’t last forever, here are some of my pictures from Mother’s Day this Sunday and our trip to Wakehurst Place in West Sussex, a garden run by Kew and the National Trust. I wasn’t really expecting more than to go for a bit of a walk and have a cup of tea with my Mum and I’d assumed the gardens would be bare, brown and green, like most of the countryside and our own garden at this time of year. I was very wrong...

Ok, well there was some brown and green by the mansion and lake.

This last one is called Daphne and smells amazing, I've no idea why no one seems to sell Daphne scented candles - I'd buy one.

m&m and kit kat birthday cake

Yesterday the boyfriend announced he needed to make a birthday cake for one of his work mates and produced a google image (no recipe of course) of what he wanted it to look like. Our version I’m pretty pleased to say looks fairly identical, if you’ve given up chocolate for lent look away now! It’s a basic vanilla sponge covered with chocolate butter cream with kit kats around the edge and peanut m&m’s on top. It’s definitely one of the better cakes we’ve made together, I’ve asked him to save me a piece but I’m not going to hold my breath as I can’t see it lasting long in his office.

We used about 18 kit kat bars and two packs of peanut m&m's.

Weekend in pictures - shoes, ducks, flowers and views

This weekend I've been...

making – a Mother’s Day card. I always make my Mum a card, I’ve done it for so long that I’m sure she’d be disappointed if I ever switched to shop brought. This one will be a simple flower stitched to cream fabric and mounted in a card.

buying – new trainers, or are these called pumps? Either way they were £15 from Marks & Spencer already a bargain but with a 20% off voucher they were £12! They’re so useful for spring/summer... I’m considering getting them in ‘spearmint’ as well.

walking – around Swanbourne Lake in Arundel. Both the boyfriend and I were so excited to see some sunshine on Sunday, so headed for a walk in Arundel one of our favourite places.

photographing – the ducks on the lake. How cute is this one with a ponytail? Monochrome is very on trend this season too!

Petal pressing – a practise

I was lucky enough to get some pretty red roses for Valentine’s Day (after some shameless hint dropping) and once they’d started to look past their best I thought I’d try to press some of the petals to use in a future DIY. I’ve titled this a ‘practise’ because supposedly you have to wait over a month to see if pressing has worked and for the flowers to dry, I’m no good at waiting so pressed some for a week then had a look to see what had happened! It looks like everything is as it should be the petals now just need to dry out more, so today I’ll bring you step one of petal pressing.

You will need
Flowers/Petals
Tissues
Paper
Heavy books

There is such a thing as a flower press but I’ve always thought that a heavy book should do the same job and is something we all have on the shelves. So, firstly use a book as a base (this way if you need to move the press at any point you can) then place a sheet of paper to protect the book, and a tissue to soak up any colour from the petals on top. Place your petals on this making sure they aren’t touching each other and then place tissue and paper on top, then the heaviest book you can find!

Leave for as long as you possibly can so the petals can dry out – this is the most difficult bit.
Step two will be checking they have worked and turning them into a DIY...