Saturday 31 October 2009

Spooky goings on ...

It's all been a bit spooky around our neck of the woods. We've been to a Halloween disco, which was excellent fun for Flopsy Bunny and even Little Roo enjoyed himself and it gave us all a chance to dress up. I've realised that I have LOTS of halloween dressing up clothes, not sure why, but I have devils horn's, witches hats and my favourite fluffy spider deely boppers!

So the halloween disco was in aid of our local pre-school and I was roped into making some halloween biscuits.
Ok so the photo doesn't really do them justice but I was actually quite pleased that they even got to this state! I used this receipe for the biscuits and rather wished I had read the comment that had been left before I started making them - I've only just seen it!! Like the commentator I also found that I got a gooey mess at the end despite following the receipe exactly! In fact I only put in half the quantity of buttermilk as I could see which direction the mixture was heading! So it did not make a dough and therefore it was impossible to cut cookies from it. Luckily I put the whole bowl in the fridge for a couple of hours and using masses of flour to flour the surface, my hands and the rolling pin I managed to cut out some decent-enough looking biscuits. The decorating bit went a bit better, although I discovered that Flopsy Bunny had been round eating all the chocolate drops which were the bats eyes! Luckily I still had a bit of black icing left to stick some more back on!

Monday 26 October 2009

Rainbow gorgeousness


Gorgeous colours - what a lovely package to open this glorious autumn morning!

Saturday 24 October 2009

One year on ...

Ok, so I've missed my first blogging anniversary by a day! I had it in my mind that it was the 24th October and as it turns out it was the 23rd! That is sooo like me .... But I'm pleased to have kept going for a whole year and want to say lots of thank yous to all of you who have read my posts and to those who have commented - it's been wonderful reading them!

It's been a lovely year where I have discovered lots of crafty people and seen some wonderful finished projects. I have to say that this has to be my best finished project of the year:

followed by this one. I haven't made as much as I would have liked to this year - I hope you will forgive me on that one and hope that next year will be even more industrious!

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Hello Goodbye

Goodbye artex ceiling and anaglypta wallpaper. Hello smooth walls and ceilings and bright fresh colour (although the photo doesn't do it justice as the light was so poor that day). Still a little bare but getting there - our newly decorated sitting room - love it!

You may have noticed a little musical theme in the last couple of posts - just something for you to hum along to when you are reading!

Sunday 18 October 2009

Make a little birdhouse in your soul

We've spent a lot of time in the car today - not intentionally I might add - we wanted to check out a Cotswold village as a possible place to celebrate DH's birthday next year. But by the time we got there it was lunchtime and by the time we had had lunch it was time to go back home again! I did manage to sneak a quick look in a lovely antiques shop close to where we parked the car and came back with this lovely - so not a completely wasted trip!

The funny thing about today though (and all that time spent in the car) was that there seemed to be several different vehicle conventions going on. First I spotted 5 open topped Porsche's in convoy, later 3 VW Camper Van's, 4 old fashioned buses and 3 hot air balloons all in convoy - it certainly was the day for being out and about!

Tuesday 13 October 2009

The Collective Unconscious and Fruit Flies!

I've been musing about Jung's concept of the Collective Unconscious lately and the idea of universal experience. It makes me think that there is a lot more to our existence than we are aware of, particularly when it comes to communication and that we could be communicating on many different levels, not just the verbal level.

So case in point, fruit flies! I've been plagued by fruit flies for the last month or so. I'm not sure where they came from, but I can't seem to be able to get rid of them, even hiding the fruit in the fridge doesn't seem to work. So imagine my surprise when last week I came across two things about fruit flies! The first, very usefully, was angry chicken's blog who had, under the title of random things, instructions on how to make a fruit fly trap! The second was an article in The Week, on some research about fruit flies which discovered that after mating the female fruit fly, rather than take her normal lunchtime nap would busy herself with chores - finding food or a good nesting site, while the male went to sleep. I now seem to know a lot about fruit flies!

I guess it could be coincidence (which I'm sure it is) but then there is a part of me which likes the idea that we are all connected in some way and that if we need something, it will come to us from somewhere!

Thursday 8 October 2009

A pile of mauve wool

Can only be for one person ...

Knitting is the only thing I can do at the moment. The excitement of getting on with my sewing projects has been put on hold while a bigger project is taking place. We are having our sitting room re-decorated and everything that was in the sitting room is now in the dining room and at the back under piles of 'stuff' is my sewing machine ... So knitting it is then for a little while but probably a good thing as I want to finish this little number by Christmas eve!