Bits and pieces

Hello bloggy friends! I have missed you! I have made a resolution to post more often. It is nice to come here and warble away. I don't visit often enough. I have a great excuse to be here today though, as I'm waiting for my literature search records to export on my other computer, so am temporarily paralysed work-wise!

I haven't been making very much recently as we've been thinking about moving house so all my thoughts have been on mortgages and property rises/crashes etc. Eek! We have looked round a few houses that are quite nice on many levels but alas, it's expensive in the Bath and all houses that we can afford have a fatal flaw. Some recent examples of fatal flaws:

-house built on top of cliff and garden perilously clinging to cliff, necessitating perilous cling to cliff for selves to navigate to shed.
-house built at bottom of cliff, necessitating much artificial lighting or slight troll-feeling whenever in back half of house
-house in good location but internal walls in wrong location, necessitating builders coming and talking of 'steels' and '£1000 for that, £1000 for that, oh yeah, another £1000 for that' jobs
-house perfect but location imperfect (ie adds another 30mins to my 1.5h commute)
-house perfect but costs too much

So, still hoping for a miracle unflawed house, and will probably get the sewing going again while I wait!

I have been being DIY handy though. Not much call for this in a rented house admittedly, but our house is plagued by black mould (curses! condensation. problem with single-skin stone houses!) so requires a fair bit of maintenence to keep mould at bay. One of the more distressing mouldy area discoveries last winter was the inside of our coats. We had hung them on the back of the front door, and condensation had built up there and there was mould all over them! So horrid. So I bought this frankly OTT girly coat hook thing from the shop opposite work. More of a convenience purchase than an actual style decision (am surprised the husband did not complain. Perhaps he is a secret shabby chic lover). Put it up last year but the weight of it pulled one of the tacks out of the wall. We had (the shame!!!) been living with this for a while:

Sorry about the perpetually shabby photos.

This situation was not satisfactory, but the tack had ripped a hole in the plasterboard and couldn't go back in. So it was MILLIPUT TO THE RESCUE!!!! I love milliput. Most of our house is held together with it. It's this sort of plasticine-type stuff that comes in a grey part and a yellow part. You roll the two different colours together and get a sort of yellow-grey putty stuff. You can then make it into whatever shape you want, and it will become ROCK HARD in a few hours. I stuffed it into the hole and then put the nail back in and waited a bit. I also got a knife and smoothed the wall so it was flat and not all lumpy with weird grellow plastaciney stuff (good tenant?!!!!). Now we are set for the heavy coats of winter:

Yes, that is a little bird sitting in the girly coat hook. It had a little picture frame in the 'o' of LOVE (of course!) so I framed a scrap of happy Tilda fabric that I had (used here). I love it! Although am now thinking I should have used something more manly to offset the 'Love'. Perhaps a photo of a lorry? Or a muscle? Suggestions welcome.

tweeeeeet! hellooo!!!

Ooh and whilst references 1001-2000 download (groan!) I will just show you the few other things I've made since we last spoke:

Veg cake mix (incl beetroot). Turned out lovely. Note also pleasing 1980s juicer in background!

Ooh and this tea cosy for my lovely work friend who got married in a flurry of bunting and joy:

Yay! Made with leftovers from our own wedding bunting. 2011/12 truly are the years of the bunting!

And finally, the one I'm most proud of: A LADY!!!

Was going to give her to our niece. Fairly sure I still am. Quite in love with her tho. Ack!!

I made her from a pattern in Mollie Makes. So proud!

Ooh and talking of proud, and ladies, our friends in the Midlands recently welcomed a GORGEOUS baby girl to their family. Just so happy for them. Congratulations J&F. 

I wanted to show you this quilt I made for them, which will hopefully be a nice playmat or something for their little one:

Tried to be gender-neutral as they didn't know whether they were expecting a boy or girl, and think it worked ok! Yay. I basically made it up as I went along. First one I've ever made. Def won't be the last! So satisfying. And the nice thing about sewing gifts is, you can feel your love for the recipient as you make them! If that makes sense.

Have a lovely evening everyone! xxxx

Regal hens

Things are very posh in the Bath. Even our eggs have crowns:

They have most likely come from the Queen's hens. Mmhmm.

I made three of the royal eggs into these awesome brownies:

My kitchen could be more photogenic. Next house -> pretty kitchen!

They are particularly awesome because they are both delicious and low in  fat. They achieve their low-fat status by being made with mayo and not butter. Husband was enjoying his brownie until I informed him of this. He continued to eat it but I could tell his heart wasn't in it.

You know I said I made some muffins the other day? Well, they were inadvertently low fat as well. About 48 hours after I baked them, I opened the microwave and found a bowl of melted-and-re-hardened butter. They turned out ok though, I really don't know why anyone needs butter when we have mayonnaise, or simply microwaves to abandon it in..

Muffin man

We were looking at our bank accounts last night and realised that it's pretty easy to spend upwards of £30 a month on muffins. Yes, muffins. If one of you in your relationship (naming no names) has a penchant for muffins, 'usually the chocolate one, but sometimes the white choc and raspberry one' and visits a certain green and white high street coffee shop every weekday to gaze at and potentially purchase one, 20x-at-least-£1.50 = at-least-£30.

£30 = dinner at a nice Bathothian restaurant! So, we went here in the virtual life and we went to Sainsburys in the real life and then made 36 muffins (half white choc and blueberry and half apple and cinnamon (made the recipe up for the latter). Unfortunately I had forgotten that most muffin recipes fail to put enough sugar in so they all taste a bit like bread. We now have 35 bready muffins in the freezer for one of us to take to work every day and chomp their way thorough. Total cost = about £5. Brilliant! Hopefully.

Finished the chest of drawers!

Lifesize wooden cat for scale. Hehe. Not really.

What do you think? I am v pleased with how it turned out. As well as the exterior renovation, we cleaned the whole thing, polished it and lined the drawers with some pretty wallpaper samples. Our linen now has a fantastic, solid, clean new home! So very pleasing. We ummed and ahhed about what type of handles to use and in the end, budget decided it for us. We went for the cheapest vaguely matching ones, amusingly named 'granny knobs'. We might switch them out for some old-looking brass ones to match the original knobs that are on the middle drawers when we get rich though. Swanky.

As a reminder, this is what it looked like before:

You can read more about the happy transformation here

I am very proud of it. And it provided a welcome distraction from the uncertanties of flat-selling. It also made me think twice about buying a house that needs lots of renovating in the form of sanding down woodwork. I am not sure my attention span would take it.

In other news, I have been busy in the kitchen:

Not the most photogenic of things I know!

They were meant to be watercress quiches but I accidentally bought bags of mixed peppery leaves instead of watercress, so they were sort of salad quiches.. sounds gross but was nice. One was for cakey Vicky's birthday and the other was for the nourishment of Husband.

Tonight I am off to see the nice lady who I sew cushions for (I can sew one for you too if you like, for your chair or bed or campervan or garden or child or anything else that is not soft or pretty* enough!), and on Friday we might go and see War Horse or The Artist. Might. Then off to Swinners at the weekend to say goodbye to some of our good friends who are departing this life for one on the other side of the world, which makes me sad and I don't want to think about it! Next weekend is the Bath birthday celebration of Dingleby, my aunt, which is VERY EXCITING so that is nice! I will tell you all about it.

*excluding children

Chillier and chillier

Just wanted to drop in to say how much I love my new chopping board:



Don't mind the weird caulk by the cooker. The gas man prised out the old cooker and then fitted a smaller one and filled in the broken edges with bath sealer. I stood there in horror feeling pleased that it was not my house. If it WAS my house, this kitchen would be in the bin!!





It's really brightened my chopping experience. Not a time of day that I have ever really contemplated as being particularly important before, but it is nice to make as many things cheery as possible, isn't it?!

I was making a chilli. I found five cans of different types of beans for £2 at Sainsbo's:

Yes, I also found a glass of red wine.

The chilli recipe came from my friend Vicky. I usually make it to my mum's recipe, but thought I'd try something new. Paprika featured heavily. It was great - nicer than it looks in the picture!!