Fathers Day!

Hi everyone,

As the title of this post suggests, this post is mainly about Fathers day :P However I would like to begin by saying a big thanks to Steph (see her blog here!) who sent me this lovely bundle in the post:

 

 

 

They are the most awesome cross stitch charts ever and she even put in an adorable little Hamtaro charm she found for me! (for those of you that don't know I love Hamtaro and hamsters in general :-)

 

How kind and lovely Steph is, I can't wait to start on some of the charts! Thank you xxxx

 

Hehe, now onto fathers day :P

 

First up, I managed to finish the Paddington Biscornu I was making for my dad just in time:

 

My dad loves Football

 

And he does some primary school maths teaching (Just to explain why I chose those Paddingtons, in case I haven't already)

 

I stitched the words 'I love You Dad' and a little heart into the opposite corners:

And I added two little love heart charms to make it extra special:

 



 

My dad really liked it and said it would probably take him years to sew something that didn't look nearly as good, lol :P He also thought the shape was cool.

 

Making this Biscornu has reminded how much I love the shape of them too, an dhow fun they are to make. Maybe I will whip up another couple using the charts Steph sent me.... ooohh.... a Hamtaro Biscornu.... I am in heaven!!!

But before I drift off into Biscornu world, back to fathers day. As well as his other presents me, my mum and my brother all clubbed together to buy ingredients for a special Fathers day picnic. I then did some baking with it all (with a bit of help from my brother) and voila:

 

We had to have it indoors because it wasn't very sunny outdoors, but I think it still looked pretty and we still had fun. There were benefits also like not being bothered by any insects, lol!

 

The round bread loaf you can see in the picture is actually a giants sandwich (a hollowed out loaf that you fill with your sandwich filling them slice it and eat it). I filled it with green salad leaves, roasted tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, basil and some Quorn ham- we managed to finish it all, it was tasty, even if I do say so myself :P

 

In terms of baking, I made peanut butter cookies:

 

Cherry and Cinnamon cake (the recipe for which can be found here)- which went reallllyy well with custard!:

And finally some black bottom cupcakes (chocolate and a blob of cheesecake mix, with cream cheese frosting on top) from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook:

 



 

Everything went down well :) Pretty much everything I know about picnics, dinner parties, and cooking in general I have learnt from watching and helping my dad (and a little bit from GCSE food tech, lol) so it was nice to get to treat him by showing him all he has taught me, and by doing all the hard work he normally has to do to put everything together for him.

I LOVE YOU DAD! XXX

After the picnic we all watched a Paddington bear DVD (my present to my dad) and the Harry hill movie (one of my brothers presents to my dad), which was amusing- and one of the main characters was a hamster, lol!

 

I hope all of you had a good weekend/Fathers day too. I better go now though, I have got to get off to college in a moment to finish my jacket,

 

See you all soon,

 

Bye XxXxXxX

Cupcakes and a chemise :)

Hi,

I hope you all have had a good week :0) I managed to finish my 15th century ladies chemise yesterday so that made me happy, wooo! My pattern is based on THIS pattern, though I changed it up a bit for my final garment. Here it is, in all its historical linen-iness :P :

Here you can see the gussets under the arms and the gores at the bottom:

It was very voluminous, before I gathered it up I felt a bit like I was drowning in all the linen :P

Now onto lots and lots of cupcakes...... where I was drowning in frosting and sprinkles, lol!

As I mentioned on my last post my mum booked for me and her to go on a cupcake and walking tour of London last Saturday. It was absolutely fabulous!!!!!!!! I got so much more cake and macarons than I had expected and in a greater array of flavours than I could have imagined (I thought I would just get a quarter of a vanilla cake at some different places and that still would have been good!).

First we went to Lorraine Pascal's bakery- cupcake bakehouse where I had chose a mini red velvet cake which was yummy. Lorraine has tried to make her icing fluffier by changing the sugar content and it sure was nice and light :)

Then after a macaron or two at Laudree it was onto Sweet couture where I chose this oreo cupcake as my sample- sooo yummy!:

 Mm mm. .. It is making me want another one just looking at it :0P

From the Hummingbird bakery we all got a red velvet cupcake, again nice and yummy!

On the tour we also stopped off at a cool Japanese resturant and bakery called Yauatcha where they had a range of over 20 macarons yo choose from. Me and my mum tried some crazy flavours including: apple crumble, banana and cinnamon and apple crumble which were all very tasty. I wasn't keen on the lemon tea one we also tried but 3 out of 4  isn't bad!:

 After a couple more stops at fortnum and masons and patisserie Valerie the tour was sadly over :/ but that didn't stop me and my mum, we headed back to Sweet Couture and picked up 4 more cupcakes to take home and try with my dad and brother:

 Another oreo (because that was so nice), a chocolate one, a red velvet one from there and the one with the bunny on is gluten free cherry bakewell. I liked them all! Though I probably did eat a bit too much cake that evening as I had about 7 quarters worth :p

In other news I have finished the first half of my dad's Paddington bear biscornu that I am making him for fathers day:

I am pleased so far. I kind of winged the back stitching by looking at the picture on the front of the kit because it was taking forever to keep looking backwards and forwards at the chart.

I'm off to the theatre now to see 1984 with my mum and brother. I have never read the story so am quite excited as I have heard it is very good. Then it is my friends birthday party tonight, yay!

I hope you all have a great bank holiday weekend,

BYE XXX

Brothers birthday + creative stitches show

Hello,

I mentioned a few posts ago that my Brothers birthday was coming up- it was this Tuesday (He loved his Domo pinata so I was pleased. It took a while to brake into so I didn't do too badly at making it! :) As usual my dad pulled an amazing cake(s!) out of the hat, this time I got to help though as I was at home and my dad said he couldn't achieve it all in the time without me :0) It was sooo fun and here are the results....

... A whole pizza dinner with drinks, sides and desserts- all made from cake!!!!

here is the mushroom (chopped dried banana  pieces) and olive (black royal icing) pizza:

The spaghetti (royal icing) and meatball (cake, chocolate and biscuit balls- I made these :P) cake:

Margherita pizza. We made the cheese look cooked by pinching the icing circles and putting little blobs of brown caramel biscuit spread on it to look liked the browned bubbles of cheese:

Onion rings (dried apple rings dipped in chocolate and biscuit crumbs), garlic bread (brioche with white chocolate on it sprinkled with grated dessicated coconut dyed green for herbs :P) and dough balls (brioche again!):

Garlic pizza bread cake:

the coke glasses were done by melting chocolate to coat the inside of the glass then filling with crumbled cake before topping with chocolate spread and inserting a stripy straw:

 

Chocolate cake chocolate gateau 1:

Chocolate cake chocolate gateau 2 (I made this one :-):

Safe to say we are still eating it all now, despite giving lots away to people! It is sooo tasty though and so cool to help make- we spent a long time thinking if what sweet items we could use to create the most realistic savoury look :P

Hahaha, In between cake eating I did manage to get to the Creative stitches and Hobbycrafts show at the Excel centre London on Thursday. It was really good and I got onto 4 workshops! (Tomorrow is the last day so get yourself down there if you can :0)

This was one of the workshops I did, ruffled ribbon petunias, so pretty :):

I got to practise my french knots for the centre which was good as now I can do them perfectly, I also learnt the little tufty  (turkey work) in the second flower which was cool as I had never done that before. Lorna Bateman was the lady who ran the workshop and she has an esty/folksy shop where she sells the kits if you like what you see above :P

This was the second workshop- making a creative textiles book cover from this material called spunbound made by Vilene. It was so cool- you put on this 3D paint through a stencil then heated it all with a heat gun and the £D paint bubbled a grew while the unpainted spunbound shrivelled and disappeared leaving holes. Then you paint it to make it look all colourful:

Then finally, I also did two embroidery workshops run by the Royal School of needlework, they were only £5 each which I think was pretty good value even though the other workshops were free (which is even more amazing value :P).

Here is my first finished piece from the Jacobean Crewelwork workshop:

Again, I learnt some new stitches and got to practice my french knots so that was all good. I will show you my silk shading sampler I started in the other workshop when I have finished it :)

Haha, after all that learning I got round to doing some shopping, well quite a bit of shopping actually.

I got these two Paddington Bear cross stitch kits, only £2.00 each! 

I am going to make something for my dad with them as he loves football, Paddington bear and he teaches maths so I thought they were perfect :P

Then I got all this:

All of the items cost me £1 or less each- what bargains :D

I better go now, got to get to bed to get my beauty sleep before my cake filled breakfast :P

See you all soon- when I may have another giveaway up my sleeve for you all.... so keep your eyes peeled :0)

Bye XxXxXxX