Happy New Year! & Hello 30s - Day 76 - 87

Happy New Year! I hope you are all well, and excited about the year ahead. I have enjoyed a wonderfully relaxed festive period, and I am now attempting to get back in the swing of things. I am about 20 photos behind with my photo project now, Christmas kind of got in the way, so I need to do a serious update, it will be split into two parts. Here is Day 76 - 87.

Day 76:It must have been a computer day, as this is the view from the spare room window, I just thought the sky looked pretty :)

Day 77:It's that bloke with the guitar again. This was our fourth and final InMe gig of the last month, have to say thanks to Lydia for the photo, as I forgot my camera.

Day 78:We put our christmas tree up. It is actually quite late for me, I'm a first weekend in December kind of girl usually, but this was the second weekend! It is only a fake little tree, but I love it, it is fat and really colourful :)

Day 79:Researching bungalows for my parents, they are hoping that the New Year brings them a relocation.

Day 80:This isn't a very exciting image I know, but if you had seen what that corner looked like before I tidied it, you would understand. It took a whole afternoon, just to tidy a corner of craft supplies!

Day 81:
These are the christmas lights inside the shopping and cinema complex in Camberley. We were going to see Harry Potter, and they frown upon you taking photos of films, so I took this while waiting for our friends. It made me feel rather festive, I had made a lot of presents this year, and bought online in advance, so had missed the general christmas hustle and bustle, but there is something quite nice about it all. I loved Harry Potter too, I felt a little let down by the last couple of films, but felt this one had picked up it's game a fair bit.

Day 82:One of Lydia's presents was Coconut Ice, we gave here a whole box, but unfortunately there was a whole plate left over, oh no! ;)

Day 83: After all the practicing, I finally created a tin of rather lovely Turkish Delight. I was really quite proud, then what did it go and do? That's right, it snowed, so my mum never got it :( , so I had to give it away to people instead.

However, now that I am practically a Turkish Delight pro, I will make my mum some more for when we go to visit :)

Day 84:Snowman! I would like to claim I made it, but I didn't, I could just see it from my window. Every time we have snow I remind myself that I really need to get myself some suitable footwear for snow, so I can go out and play in it :)

Day 85:Lydia's final present arrived for her 30th birthday. With all the snow and post delays, I was thinking it would be hopeless, but it arrived, and the postman received some of that turkish delight for making me very happy.

Day 86:I spent the day baking cakes - yes most of the day. Yes, it is supposed to be blue.

Day 87:We took Lydia's birthday cake, presents, and christmas presents round to her house.

It was the biggest rainbow cake she had ever seen. Lee May Foster from Bonbi Forest had made such a cake, and posted a photo on her blog, and when I saw it, I knew that Lydia would love it, and I had, had it in mind ever since. Thank you to Lee May.

Even I was a little impressed by it, I am all cake baked out now though!

Next update to follow very soon!

Hello 30s - Day 63 - 75

Oops I think this might be my biggest update so far!

Day 63:
Boyfriend and I have been very good recently, not wasting money on snacks, and food we don't really need. However this was my first mince pie, and cheeky glass of red of the festive season :)

Also note the wee little mousey sugar scrub, that arrived as a free gift, with my order from Bits'n'Bobs.

Day 64:
"It crawls.... It creeps.... It eats you alive!" No it isn't a movie remake, it is my first ever attempt at turkish delight. In case you are wondering, it is seriously burnt.

Day 65:My second attempt at turkish delight. I definitely didn't burn it this time, it looks ... a bit lurid, but okay, the question is, would it set?

Day 66:
The answer is no, no it wouldn't set, the consistency was more like what you would find in those cheap, strawberry yogurts, with the fake cream on top. It tasted great, but you needed a spoon, so it was thrown away. The first time I failed I was pretty sad, this time, well, it just became something that wasn't going to beat me...

Day 67:
On a more positive note, what do you do with left over double cream? You mix it up with some milk, sugar, Green and Blacks cocoa, and a generous splash of Kahlua... well it was very cold!

Day 68:
As the rest of the country became buried in snow, someone dusted us with icing sugar.

Day 69:
The second attempt was a little more impressive,

Day 70:
My friend Lydia turns 30 on Christmas Eve, which is a little harsh, it makes it incredibly difficult to celebrate on the day, with all your friends shooting off to see family. It also makes it difficult to find decent birthday cards in the shops. This year, she planned ahead, and a bunch of us went to a thai restaurant, for some rather hot, but delicious food, and a rather yummy cocktail! We each had one of these trays for our main :) We followed this up with a bar and more cocktails.

Day 71:
I'm not sure if I have posted a pic of this balloon before? This was my balloon, that my sister gave to me for my 30th, a week before my birthday. I'm really impressed, that roughly 80 days later, it is still going :) However it will have to go this weekend, as it is living in my christmas tree corner, still I thought it deserved a mention for having great balloon stamina.

Day 72:My friend,s Gayle and Paul, are due to get married in 2012, and have asked me to create wedding invitations. I haven't spoken to them in a while, not sure if they still want me to do them, but I have been knocking some ideas around. This was just me playing around with some typefaces for them to look at, as it doesn't seem fair to put ideas for their invites up here, before they see them.

Day 73:
One of Lydia's birthday presents arrived and as I don't have a fancy gift bag, I needed to wrap it in something. Normal wrapping paper just wasn't going to cut it, so I decided I would make it personal, and customise some brown paper with my own doodles - I do love brown paper and circles.

Day 74: The third attempt at turkish delight, the mixture was far thicker this time, which is why it is in a butter dish, as it didn't spread out as much. The butter dish was also the only other squarish container I could find. So did I succeed?

Day 75:
You bet I did :D I am really quite pleased to discover, that I am not quite the impatient quitter, that I had the suspicion I might be, I do actually persevere. More importantly I beat the turkish delight! Ha Ha!! :)

The final wrapped up present covered in my doodles. I personally think that it looks quite effective.

Hello 30s - Day 55 - 62

Day 55:"I iz not impressed with zhis catnip sock!" - Well that is what I think she is saying anyway :)

Day 56: Today we went into London to meet up with our friends Liz and Trent, as they were over from Germany. After a nice spot of lunch at Zizzi's, we went to the Tate Modern to see the Sunflower Seeds.

The Sunflowers Seeds installation by Ai Weiwei, has been hand created by a workforce in Jingdezhen, in China. They are all hand painted and absolutely beautiful. There are millions of them.

Originally visitors were able to interact with the seeds, walk on them, pick them up, lie down, but because of the dust that was created from the porcelain, it was decided that it would be a health risk. Now you can only look at them.

What is amazing, other than their beauty, and quantity, is how much you do want to touch them, the urge is almost overwhelming. It was so amusing, to see people trying to quickly shoot an arm under the barrier, to take one, only to get caught, and then be watched over, as they were told to put it back. We saw only one lady secure a seed without being caught.

We also watched the documentary film that is part of the exhibition. It was really interesting, Ai Weiwei describes how it feels like, the story of the Sunflower Seeds will go down in Jingdezhen's history like a myth - one day a man brought two and a half year's work to the city, by asking them to create, and paint millions of porcelain sunflower seeds by hand, the seeds were then packed up, and shipped off to London. I think that it is such a lovely idea, it really does sound like something out of a fairy tale.

In this country we often joke about China, everything we buy that is mass produced, seems to come from there. It is both refreshing, and beautiful, to see something completely hand crafted by skilled artists.

Day 57:
Yum! Liz brought us over some spatzle and Kase-Spatzle mix. Cheesy and delicious, the texture of the noodles is so moreish!

Day 58:This is my new toy, my clay extruder, I am very excited about it. It was also from Liz, as part of my birthday present :) I haven't used it properly yet, but I have put clay through it, and worked out how to take it apart and clean it.

Kase-Spatzle packaging!!! The packaging from our meal the night before. I'm pretty sure it isn't just me that is a geek for packaging from other countries. I just love seeing packaging I'm not used to seeing every day .

Day 59 :Boyfriend. He is a rather wonderful boyfriend, but was less than impressed, that I had chosen him, to partake in my photo of the day.

Day 60:
Front door! Jenny from The Felted Rainbow was asking for doors, with the numbers 1-24 on, for her advent calendar blog, so I obliged.

Day 61:
InMe - White Butterfly gig at The Garage in London. InMe are my favourite band, I have been following them around since 2003, after seeing them play at The Sugarmill in Stoke. They are currently playing 4 gigs at The Garage, one a week, each gig will be one of their albums, in it's entirety. We went to 'Overgrown Eden' last week, this gig was songs from White Butterfly, and this week I have 'Daydream Anonymous' . This is Dave!

This is Gaz.

We were pretty lucky to get there on time. The Garage is next to Highbury and Islington tube station, and for this gig Lyds decided to try and drive it. Now we are not sure if the sat nav got it wrong, or we didn't follow it properly, but we ended up driving through a very busy, Kensington and Mayfair. I say driving, but there were a lot of road works, so with only 7 miles to go, we found ourselves doing a lot of sitting and waiting. At 4.3 miles to go, and 40 minutes before the band were due on, after about 60 minutes of sitting, we gave up. Lyds put her car in an NCP, right in the middle of Piccadilly, and we jumped on the tube. Lyds says the £25 on parking was a learning experience - it was a great gig though :)

Day 62:
Now I'm not sure if this is cheating, but when I took this picture on the way home, it was after midnight, so I figured if it is good enough for Gremlins, it is good enough for me :) Who doesn't love sparkly Harrods lights anyway?

Folksy Friday - White Butterfly

I am running a bit late today, due to getting to bed quite late, after going to see one of my favourite bands last night. "InMe" were playing all the songs from their "White Butterfly" album, so therefore, the theme for my Folksy Friday pays homage, here are some White Butterfly inspired Folksy finds.



Feel free to click on any of the images to be taken to the product on Folksy :)

Hello 30s - Day 44 - 54

This is another huge update!

Day 44:
I had been sorting out the kitchen cupboards, and had found lots of left over bits and pieces, so decided to make some bird cakes. Here they are hardening up in the fridge.

Day 45:
I decided to get a bit experimental with polymer clay, I want to start making some more pendants. This was my first attempt, although the second and third were much better :)

Day 46:
More experimenting with polymer, those sugary colours make it look good enough to eat right?

Day 47:
The first of the christmas presents are wrapped. I was seeing my friend Liz, as she was over from Germany, so I thought I would get myself organised, and have her presents ready so I didn't have to risk losing them in the post :)

Day 48:
Empty bottle... We are trying to save money at the minute, so rather than buying a bottle of wine, we decided to drink what we already had in the house. This was the strawberry vodka we picked up at the food fair in Cockermouth :)

Day 49:
Goodies arrived for me to play with!

Day 50:
I don't actually find myself sanding that often, but when I do, it feels like it is all I ever do. There was the usual sanding of skin from fingers - ouch!

Day 51:
This was me planning my trip into London, I always take my trusty map book with me in case the tube is down and I have to rely on buses or something. As it turned out it was an easy walk and I didn't need it, but I like to be prepared.

Day 52:
There has been lots of amusement this week for myself and Ollie the cat, created from a piece of pink ribbon. There were some better shots, but I felt this really captured the action.

Day 53:
Boyfriend really does make the best venison, bacon, cheese and onion relish burgers! :)

Day 54:
I have started some graphics work for a christmas concert, I am currently trying to work out out to make lengthy carols fit onto one page - eek!