Finally done!

This is the longest amount of time i've ever spent making a single item, apart from maybe that scarf i made.
Anyway the pillow I've been making for my mum is finally done!

 The colour looks a bit funny in this photo, i tried to fix it but failed. Anyway this is the back.

 And this is the front. My parents names in the heart and a leaf for each of their children, and the dog!

I think it looks right at home sat on their bed. Now to wrap and hide it until Christmas. I'm way too ahead of myself.

This week i've been doing a lot of packing, you see i'm moving to Bedford on Tuesday! That's less than a week and i haven't even started sorting out my bedroom at all. Oops.

This is the cutest owl i've ever seen in my life. Don't even try and deny it, you know it's perfect!

Have i ever told you that i like VW camper vans? Well i do, a lot. Those and beetles! I don't know why but they're so adorable. The old beetles obviously. And i love that this camper van is on a cupcake. I just want to eat it up! nom nom nom.

 They had lots of old cars at the unfair ground at Glastonbury this year. Can you see the VW beetle on the left? They also had lots of things made out of old cars. It was pretty cool.
Anyway enough rambling from me. I will blog more i promise, once i've moved and unpacked.
Have a lovely week!

August is Red

In my last post I showed you come pictures of what I've been baking recently. Well I posted the plum cakes I made and since then have made a lot more plum goodies. Red Red plums.
Sadly I've not taken any pictures but I think you'll get the point! There's been loads of baking going on.
A plum crumble
Stewed plums with meringue and whipped creme
Another giant plum cake
German plum dumplings
And we still have heaps of plums left over, have you got any suggestions for more things i could make?

As promised this week I'd show you things I've been making.

I've had this little mirror lying around for months just waiting to be decorated. Before it was white covered in big colourful hand painted flowers. I also made those red rosettes a few months ago too with my glue gun *love it* but didn't have anything to do with them yet. Add a few pages out of a book my brother was using as a notebook for a photography project and hey presto. I also love that quote. Now i just need my boyfriend to look into it.

close-up of the fabric flower Rosettes made of a silky material.

Now I'm pretty sure that I told you what I'm making my mum for Christmas already. Well this is it. In the process. this is the back anyway. I've put buttons down the middle so it can easily be taken off for washing.

This is the front. Yes i haven't rotated it. But It's not done yet, so you'll be getting another picture soon. I still need to add more lines on the tree a few brown a few black. My parents names are in the heart and there's a leaf for each of their children. Me and my three siblings, and our dog!

These are my two newest owl additions. Made from my little brothers old socks and a bit of fabric i had lying around, oh and buttons too. Their names are Oliver and Olivia, perfect companions for Odette the last owl i made.

Moving on to things I've found on the internet and really like.

This bed. Must have it. Not as cool as a bed in a wardrobe i must admit but I'll settle for it. My boyfriend probably wouldn't mind this as much!

Now this is awesome! You attach a device full of powdered chalk onto your bike so as you ride it sticks to your tyre and you draw all over the road. I want to colour my village pink!

Owl jewelery; I've now got a stupid amount. An owl ring, two owl necklaces. One is a bronze owl in the middle and the other is a string of beads every other one shaped like an owl which is silver. Two pairs of dangling own ear-rings. You now the ones that are tiered. If not, sorry, that will probably confuse you. I don't really wear much jewelery but i make exceptions for owls.

This is me down to a T. I can't run to save my life, literally. I can't walk up hills to save my life. I feel like I'm going to die!

I'll try update more often for you, especially now that I've joined pinterest. You can find me here.

Stumblings

Sorry for the long gap between me posting again. I would make up a bunch of excuses but in reality i just forget. How bad is that! I've been in North Wales and have had family friends over for a weekend so i have been "sort of" busy.
Here's just a collection of images that i've found while stumbling around the internet. I hope you enjoy!

This is cleverbot (the one typing in blue) She's pretty fun to talk to. She saves responses from people who have spoken to her and uses these to respond to others so seems pretty intelligent. However i have noticed that she doesn't take the whole conversation into context, just the previous sentence. But still fun non-the-less!

This meme makes me giggle. But it's so true! Some girls will happily prance around in their bikinis and not care who sees but is horrified if anyone catches her in her underwear. What's the big difference really? Apart from maybe a thong!

This image makes me giggle. Especially top left. He just looks so angry in comparison to all the others!

I would be that happy when i got post, apart from the fact that it's normally just bank statements and student finance letters. If anyone sent me a letter i would be over the moon! My dad, knower of all things, says that paper and fountain pen sales have been rising slowly over the past few years as more people love the feeling of sending and receiving hand written mail. Cute.

Continuing with the theme of modern times being LAME! haha. The thing about the present is that because of the internet we can find thousands of useless facts and information that really are pointless and everyone is nostalgic for "simpler times". They want children to play in the streets without worrying about pedophiles or being kid-napped. Apparently those times were safer. I think every generation has this attitude. I bet out great-grandparents were nostalgic for their childhood times. But kidnappings and pedophilia hasn't risen, it's just more widely publicized due to the media accepting that it does occur. And all the technology we now have has led us to create machines which can save lives and cleverbot! We can also travel more! I like the future.

Anyway, moving on. I appologise for that ramble. Hipster glasses! I've mentioned before that hipsters must hate that being hipster is in style right now. But charity shops must be loving it! these glasses are so cute! Those with a nice mustache would look so adorable. Never know she may have one in her etsy shop. She's got an owl!

Speaking of mustaches. you didn't think i was going to have a blog post without cupcakes did you? I love the variety of mustaches on the guys with hats!

Can't have a cucake without a good cup of tea in a super cute mug. I seriously want a kiln now, you have no idea! I love that the squirrels body is indented into the mug while it's tail acts as the handle. It doesn't even need to be colourful because the detail in the design makes it stand out already.

Just like a can't have a post without cupcakes i can't have one without owls. You can now buy this kawaii t-shirt from lolmart. Go on buy one. I know you want to. RLY!

This image concludes my post for today. It's made by Suzy from Folk Art Papercuts. I love how intricate her designs are. If i ever wanted to make one I'd need a sharper scalpel knife because I'm pretty sure mine would just tear through the card. But i may still give it a go.

Hope you're having a lovely week so far!

Grammar and Randomness

I Admit it, I'm a grammar Nazi. If you've never heard that term before I'm not trying to compare myself with a Nazi and i appologise if it offends you. But if you have you'll know what I'm on about. I hate reading things which contain bad grammar. Well not so much grammar, but spelling. Here's a picture demonstrating my main spelling pet peeves.

The one i hate most it they're/their/there. I have a friend who always writes it as they're. Annoys the hell out of me. Ah well.

I do actually use this comma. Since I started reading academic journals at university and they all use the oxford comma. I swear at primary school they tell you not to use it though. If you're using and you don't need a comma. I'm going to be a primary school teacher sometime soon, so I'm sure I'll find out at some point.

Yes, although i call myself a grammar Nazi, I do actually get things wrong sometimes. But my mistakes are never as bad as the above example."Too", "Its", "Dificult". Fail!

Anyway. Moving on to things I think are cool.

This is actually a realistic idea for a kitchen i think. Most of my house ideas normally involve secret rooms and other expensive things. This would make it a lot easier to add extra people around than table just by squashing instead of adding another chair. It's also just like a restaurant. Well some of them anyway. The best ones. Red Robin *cough cough*

So i was playing Sims the other day, the first one. I was extremely bored, don't judge me! And my baby transformed into a child and this creepy lady face appeared as my child's face. My actual child was normal looking though and next time i went on all was normal. The weirdest bit about it is that the one on the congratulations pop up is frowning. And the one next to the family faces is smiling. Odd.

I want to make a couple of these. It's genius! All you have to do is snap a glow stick, tear it open, tip the inside into a jar, and shake. That simple yet so effective.

This is a pine forest in Poland where around 400 trees grow at a 90 degree angle facing north. This is an inexplicable occurrence and a pine tree forest close by is completely normal. It's called the "Crooked Forest" and I really want to go there!

I think this is such a cute idea for a wedding, but it could also be used for other occasions. How about a parent and newborn with their name or the word baby inside? I would try and think of more for you, but I'm lazy. I'm sure you could think of some pretty awesome ones for yourself.

Last but not least i leave you with this beauty. My little brother is convinced that the zombie apocalypse will happen so this would be perfect for him.

I hope you have a good week.

Baking week and random creativity

This week i have made a ridiculous amount of cakes. I can't show you a picture of one of them right now because it's in the oven as we speak. That one is my birthday cake, because i turn twenty tomorrow. And by birthday cake i mean tray of brownies. There will be plenty of pictures taken of it soon.
Right so the first thing i made was pie.

It was going to say I ♥ apples. But ran out of space for the s. As you can probably guess it was an apple pie. And it was so yummy. I kind of want some more. This was for my mum. She loves tart pies.
The same day i decided we also needed more cake. As i loved the cake-cones (cupcakes baked in icecream cones) so much i decided to make some more.

As you can see this time i added flakes. I also did a dollop of frosting instead of swirls. Yes it's less realistic, but there was far too much frosting last time. The ratio was off. i also used chocolate sauce this time so it remains nice and sticky instead of melted chocolate. And one more variation was adding sprinkles to the cake mix. They are so good!
The same day i made more cakes. Well Rice crispy cakes. they are one of the very few things one of my brothers is not allergic to. So they contain no dairy, nuts or egg.

I made them using toffee and marshmallow. They were the stickiest thing i've ever had to work with. But definitely worth it.
After all of that baking i took i day off. But we had lots of pastry left over so today i made a few more things. Firstly i thought we needed something savoury so i made a quiche.

It is spinach, pepper, onion and cheese flavour. I can't tell you how it tastes yet as it's my dinner for tonight but it sure does look good.
Even after this there was still pastry scraps left over so i made some mini red current tarts.

The three at the bottom of the first picture are actually jam tarts. Not red current. They are made with my little brothers home made crab apple jam. It's so tasty!
So that's all my baking. I just took my birthday brownie out of the oven and it smells good i'm telling you! Can't wait to eat a giant slice tomorrow.

Right, as i said i took a day off of baking but that day off actually involved crafts of a different type. A non-edible type. This week I did lots of painting. And a bit of gluing and cutting.
Painting first.
Firstly my mum said she wanted a new door sign for the front door.

 This side is for when we are at home, in the house, somewhere. Our house is pretty big and the knocker is sometimes hard to hear so it's just to let the postman or builders or whoever that we are actually in.

The second side if for when we're at home but in the garden. Obviously. Just to let everyone know where we are.
And because i liked the flower design so much i also added it to these frames i was re-painting. They looked all knackered and old before.

Aren't they so cute! Now i just need a couple of pictures of me and my boyfriend. Perfect.
The last thing i painted was owls. I love them. Every post must include owls!

They are supposed to be a tawny, barn, eagle and snowy owl. probably can't really tell. But i like them anyway. I want to make an army of them!
I actually stole this idea from somewhere, from someone. But i don't remember who. I think it was featured on My owl barn. I'll go have a look for you now. Bear with me.....

The last thing i made this week, well more like decorated is a pair of shoes which i want to wear to my university graduation next Wednesday.

The main issue i had with them before i that my feet would slide to the bottom, squash my toes and my make heels slip out when i walked. Annoying! So i just added giant ribbons to them. Now i love them even more than when i first bought them; they were just so boring!

Hope you've been having a nice week. See you next week!

Fabric flowers and cupcakes

I got his owl ring! Yay!  it looks better than the picture makes it out. I took it in the dark so the flash makes it look funny. But i love it!

 I got a glue gun! it's my new favourite toy. I can think of hundreds of things to make with this beauty and i want to do them all right now. Guess i'll spread them out though so i can cure my boredom over time. haha.

 These are the first things i made.

They started out as normal flip-flops from Target in the US with plastic straps which would rub on my feet if i wore them for a long time. So i cut off the straps threaded on some flower printed fabric and glue-gunned the bottom of the fabric into the holes where the plastic straps sat before. They are so comfy too! and because you can tie them behind the ankle they don't slip off. Win.

Oh yes. I don't have access to the sewing machine as it's buried under mountains of kitchen stuff (our kitchen is being renovated)  so i can't make the pillows i want to do which sucks ever so slightly.

I plaited some white fabric for these which frayed a lot when i cut it, so it has the appearance of rope. I don't like these as much so may change them at some point.

I also used my glue gun to make these fabric rosettes which i then stuck onto hair clips. Such a cute accessory!

I made these icecream cones (cupcakes) which i showed you in a previous post. They turned out really yummy and i can't wait to make more. I've got proper chocolate sauce this time too instead of melted chocolate. I really want to use meringue instead of frosting too. Don't know how that will work out, but we'll see.

Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom! I had the last one yesterday. It was good.

You will probably want to check this out in full size. I like it because of the owl. Obviously.