Crafty Rooms

Last night I stayed up till 3.30am staring at the screen with disbelief at the different craft rooms that all these crafty people have. I also found it amazing that there are so many bloggers out there, with all their own fresh ideas and ways of expressing themselves. I loved it! Such an amazing experience to be involved in.

Anyway.. back to the craft room. Currently, I have a dining room table. No Joke. In my mums kitchen, but the sewing machine needs to be moved every day, and everything put away. Ideally I would love ribbons all in reels displayed where i can see them, labelled tubs and boxes and jars of buttons, a table for my sewing machine with a big light above it. And i would love loads of haberdashery. I feel thats my problem at the moment..I don't have enough stuff to decorate things!

here is some of the rooms that I would love to re-create.

And so many more!! I found these images on google images but most of them linked to peoples blogs, so if it is yours, then I love it! 

And of course, I love pink suede shoe's craft closet and her tape and ribbon display! 

La 

x

Christmas Decorations.

I have been inspired by the likes of Kirstie's Homemade Home on Channel 4, Cath Kidston's Sew! and of course pink suede shoe. (If you haven't seen her stuff, have a look. She is perhaps the most inspirational person on the internet. And currently my idol!)  
So due to the snow day I got a head start on my Christmas decorations. I have a list of people to make for:
1. Cameron's Mum and Dad.
2. Emma and Paul.
3. Sean's Birthday/Christmas.
And then out-with the list, I am making things for my own tree for a proper homemade christmas. And hopefully by next year everything could be homemade!

I gathered some bits and pieces and got some felt from John Lewis and created 4 little decorations. They aren't perfect, but I like how unique they are!

My Christmas Cracker. Although I realise now this could
be seen as a fish.. 

Snow Man. I spent extra time on this for the scarf.
I hand stitched the scarf bit by bit to make it look like it's a knitted scarf. 

Christmas Tree. Perhaps a bit too much stuffing! 

I personally love this. I made sure that I
positioned the needle on the sewing machine
to make it look like the patches had
been hand stitched on!

Snow Day

The snow covered the streets and trees of Glasgow these past few days and I have never been so pleased!

Today I woke up to find that ALL trains to Jordan Hill were cancelled and even better - All tutorials and lectures were cancelled. So today I am free to do what I want, which means that finally I am getting a chance to do my crafts. I will upload my pictures and descriptions of what I've done later. But for now.. :-) 

Isn't it beautiful.

Bert in the snow. 

Cookies!

My first blog.
25th November 2010.

Currently listening to: Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers.

Finally got a bit of spare time today and decided to make some cookies. Easiest thing to bake, ever!
I pinched the recipe from a friend, experimented a few times and finally feel like i've got it just right.
I've attached lots of photos to describe the process!

Okay, Heres what I used:

300g chocolate. I like to use chocolate buttons, and a mixture of milk and white!
200g soft unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
300g plain flour
150g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp bicarb soda.

Recipe cards are always a lovely idea to put in a little box. BUT, of course I managed to make a mistake and forget plain flour. a crucial ingredient, but I forgot it.

I preheated the oven to 180 degrees C and got myself some baking trays. I used three because the cookies spread a lot and I wanted to give them their room to grow! I lined each with re-usable baking parchment. Now ready for the good stuff..

The card suggests breaking the chocolate up, which I used to do. But now I have chocolate drops. (See below, the beautiful jars of chocolate!)

I sliced up the butter into little cubes and placed all the sugar in one bowl. I.e. the caster sugar and the soft light brown sugar. Then whizzed them up in the mixer until creamy.

Once creamy add the flour and eggs. Beat the eggs before hand. Then add the tsp of bicarb and tsp of vanilla. Although I like to have a rough measurement of vanilla because I really like the taste of it! Mix that all together and every so often lift the head of the mixer up and peel off the mixture from tool. (? utensil..hm..i'm sure it'll have a technical name.)

Now for the best bit! Add the chocolate.
As promised above, here are the jars of chocolate..

Once the chocolate is added, give it a twirl round to make sure it is distributed around the mixture. Then it's ready to be prepped for the oven..

For a while I used an ice-cream scoop to scoop on the mixture to the tray. But, that made them really big and only got about 6 cookies out of the mixture. So, of course, I changed that method and now just do rough spoonfuls and a bit of prodding with my fingers to position them. Fill up the trays and put them in the oven for roughly 10-12minutes.

I find that the trick to having a soft centre in a cookie is to leave it in for about 9 minutes and let them cool for a long time. This makes them soft always, just like Marks and Spencers cookies! (Aspiring to taste as good as them, if not better.)

After they come out the oven, let them cool on the baking tray until they look like they can be scooped up without cracking and misbehaving. Then transfer them to a wire rack or a storage box.

They aren't perfect but I think that is what's great about them. They are unique and a little bit quirky.













Make these again and again and again. Can never get bored of cookies.


La
xx