Coming soon!

Been a bit quiet on the blogging front but I promise there are things on the way!!!

A tutorial type thing on how to use fabric dye - well I know it says on the packet how to do it but I got some quite unexpected results! Perhaps it should be a tutorial on how NOT to use fabric dye ha ha ha!

Got a few garments cut and ready to sew up, a few things I still haven't photographed due to naughty laziness and the thought that I might actually coerce a friend into modelling for me....

Also will have some more crochet delights and a couple of mystery items that will be blogged at some point after August 15th as they are birthday presents and I don't want to give the game away!

Might also do a gift wrapping post, if you know me personally you'll probably have received a substandard gift with wrapping so good you couldn't care less about the actual contents! This is something I like to do through boredom and random urges to show off.....well everyone does it.....

So stay tuned, I haven't forgotten about blogging, hopefully the posts coming up will make up for it :)

For some reason Blogger isn't letting me add pictures at the moment, is anyone else experiencing this?

Rainy Saturday afternoons....

....Are meant for baking!

 Today's recipes for weight gain and diabetes are - 

* Carrot Tea-cake*

First time I have made carrot cake and it won't be the last! 

The cake is lovely and moist and the cream cheese frosting sets it off wonderfully.

I got the recipe from Martha Stewart's website - Check it out!!

 

* Chocolate Orange Cookies *

Proper American style squidgy delicious cookies!
These will not last long!

So much better than ones you buy from the supermarkets and way better than the ones made from a box of cookie mix, really quick and simple to make so no excuses not to make your own!
I got the recipe from a great new blog I discovered a few days ago called Eat Cake For Dinner - not that I need any more encouragement ha ha ha!
The recipe can be found here - the only changes I made was to substitute orange rind for orange flavouring as that was all I had to hand. Check out the other recipes on the blog, every last one of them look mouth wateringly tasty, I simply HAVE to make the Neapolitan whoopie pies!

Hope everyone else is having a great Saturday whatever the weather!

Inspiration of the week 9/7/11

Obviously you all have seen inspiration posts many times before so I'll just give the briefest bit of info on this - here is a bunch of pictures and links to stuff that got my attention this week!
Will be a bit of a mixture of things as I'm not exclusively into any particular area of creativity, feel free to comment on my choices or give any suggestions for similar things!
Please note that these images were not taken by / are not owned by me, if I have used an image that belongs to you and you are not happy with its use please let me know and I will remove it.

Here goes....

This is the image that started it all off! Click to enlarge it to appreciate it in it's full glory!
It is a 1:12 scale themed dollhouse display and I wish I saw it when it was on sale!
Absolutely amazing details and colours, I love, love, LOVE the purple glitter on the top of the pumpkin and ummm basically just want one!

For those of you out there with patience and talent there is a tutorial on how to make this HERE

I would really love to have the talent to make something like this, perhaps I could have a go in secret and not tell anyone if it turns out super rubbish ha ha ha!
The genius lady behind this also has an etsy store - the link on the tutorial doesn't seem to work but once I get hold of it I will add it to this post.

***

Going along with the fairy tale magical theme, the film Legend directed by Ridley Scott is amazing! Featuring a young Tom Cruise, unicorns, a Tim Curry devil/demon and enough glitter to fill your entire house with! There is even glitter everywhere in hell!

If you haven't seen it then you should! Seriously beautiful set designs and did I mention loads of glitter?!!

***

Saw some beautiful dresses from the Paris Couture week, Valentino as usual had a load of stunners but the real treat for me was the Elie Saab dresses. I wish I could afford the beautiful flowing fabrics used to make his gorgeous romantic fairytale gowns!

 If money was no object hey?!

***

Last but not least a tutorial from Martha Stewart for fabric pumpkins.
Don't they look awesome?
The tutorial can be found HERE.

I realise that my inspiration this week has been a little unseasonal but the weather has been pretty unseasonal too! Thundered for over three hours yesterday complete with a torrential downpour... English summers.... don't know whether to laugh or cry!

As I said above, let me know what your inspiration was this week and if any of my inspiration has in turn inspired you!

Sorry for the absence!

Well the blogging went a bit downhill didn't it?!
The reason for this is that I have a new job! I now work repairing and altering work-wear at a local company and I enjoy it so much! It might not sound like the most exciting job in the world but being sat at a sewing machine all day is great. Although the work isn't the same as making clothes, it is all good expeience and I am well and truely a mistress of zips - I can whack in one of those bad boys faster than the speed of light ha ha ha! I also feel that by using an industrial machine I have so much more control over my domestic to the point that my domestic seems snail paced now.
The hours are a huge bonus point, 7am - 3.30pm Monday to Thursday, 7am - 2.30pm Friday..... No weekends! No evenings! No bank holidays! I am spoilt!
I get to work with loads of really nice people both in the sewing room and those who work in other parts of the building too. Even the company is a nice one, 200 years old, still family run and loads of niceties from easter eggs to a birthday card put in the post for you. We even got bought ice-creams last week and everyone stopped work to enjoy them despite it not being anyones tea break or lunch break or second tea break, shame about the weather that day but the gesture was really nice :)

So my apologies for the lack of posting, understandably the routine has been difficult to get into, I am not used to getting up at 5.30am so the first few weeks I was asleep on the sofa by about 6pm! This week I have been doing my best not to nap, so far so good! Next week I will be trying to do a bit more during my afternoon/evening, this week has been a stay awake but not do too much kind of week, one step at a time in routine establishment works better than all at once.

I do have some things to photograph and post about including something I made for myself to wear on a night out, perhaps with a dodgy tutorial to go with it.
I was also thinking about doing a weekly inspiration post sort of thing with some of the things that my incessant internet trawling has dug up, might get a bit random though - you have been warned!

Baking extravaganza and special banana bread recipe!

Having been unable to do any baking for a while I went into mass production mode when the lovely Tesco's delivery man brought me all my basics with the grocery shopping....

First of all I made about 2 dozen of these -

I got the recipe here, from Land Girl 1980's blog, recently discovered on one of my many late night blog crawls!
They are WW2 scones, flattened into cookies. I did make some scone sized versions but fell in love with the crunchy outer texture and decided biscuits were the way forwards!  I did make some slight amendments from the original recipe by adding some cinnamon (about 1 tsp) and some raisins and sultanas (a few handfuls, I didn't really measure them, just dumped a load in ha ha!) to the mix.
They are best fresh from the oven but will go soft (still really yummy) after a few hours. This might be because I don't have a biscuit tin to put them in. I will have to either dig out an old tin from somewhere or splash out in Poundland ha ha ha!

Later on in the day I made two massive banana breads, one chocolate chip and banana, the other sultanas, raisins, cinnamon and banana. I had a lot of bananas to use up!

Still munching on the banana and chocolate one, great with some cold custard. The other beast was given to some dear friends as sustenance whilst in the process of moving house :)

 

 On the left is the chocolate, the right is the cinnamon.

How to make your own banana bread beast.....

Motivation, never leaving the house and leggings.....

Well, this post is sort of blogland current affairs with many of the blogs I read mentioning the topic.

This will be in two main parts, my struggle for motivation and the curse of awful clothing choices because I hardly leave the house.


Ok, motivational depletion.....like this lazy so and so...

My dear sweet Biggins is a bad influence!
Well, it's not really the cat's fault, it's my poor adjustment to not being at work and having to organise my own time. Being laid off sucks! I really need to adjust to this situation before I reach the point of no return, it's been about a month now, and I have been so unproductive in this time.
Laurell K Hamilton (best selling author of the Anita Blake series) has been doing a series of blog posts and a couple have hit on the issue of motivation, especially this one, it's good to know you're not alone, however, it would be better if it mentioned a quick cure for the lazy-itus!

I know I need to deal with this, I won't always have the luxury of so much time on my hands, it is frustrating to know that when I was at work all day long, getting home at 10-10.30pm I would come home and get cracking on the sewing and have a pretty good completion rate given the time spent on things, and now I am home all day I rarely get anything started let alone finished.

How do all you ladies who work from home do it?!
I worry that it is a sign I would never be able to work for myself, and that is something I really really want to do, at least to the extent a part time job outside my home would be able leave me financially secure.


The second part of my post is related to my being at home all day too.
I have become a slob! Leggings are now my most worn item - nooooo!!!!
This issue of sloppiness has come up over at Gertie's blog, because she has just started working from home. A funny but very true post, based on a reader's comment - here - highlights that the problem I am facing with dressing for comfort and neglecting style. The leggings first appeared as a trial for an alternative to footless tights, meant to be worn in the same manner, under dresses, for extra warmth and to last a bit longer. So far so innocent right! This quickly turned into a case of wearing them as an alternative to trousers for when I am sewing, I sit on the floor a lot and buttons dig in and get uncomfortable.
Then it promptly became a case of "well I'm not leaving the house so it doesn't matter what I look like".
Such an easy habit to slip into!
Just for the record I really don't feel comfortable just wearing leggings to leave the house in, a bit too exposing in the bottom area, not a good look!
Take into consideration that despite working in a hot smelly kitchen I always wore tailored trousers with my chef jacket and a full face of make up so I didn't look too awful when I left the kitchen!
So there is no excuse not to make the effort at home.
Especially when Leigh Ann over at Voodoo Stitches wore this dress to clean her home in!
So stunning! And a reminder that ditching the leggings as anything other than a little added warmth/modesty under something pretty is an absolute must!

As mentioned at Gerties blog, the key to keeping it pretty whilst at home is ensuring that everything is comfy, so I think it is about time I made a few things for myself that look pretty, not too over the top, which also are as un restricting as leggings.




Perhaps this is my motivation, not the motivation I would ideally like, but a start at least.
Sorry for the lengthy ramble here, sometimes you just have to get it all out!

Things I forgot to put up.

A couple of items that I had brought upstairs to photograph and put on here but forgot about! 

I made the skirt about a fortnight ago, it's so small, probably fit a child! The halter top was made shortly afterwards, same pattern as normal, edited to have tie up straps instead.

 I made the pattern for the skirt using an A4 piece of paper, measured the top of it to determine the amount of panels I would need...... and completely forgot about seam allowances! Which is why it ended up so small, I have got another similar skirt on the go (being lazy and not finishing it because it is one of those time consuming and completely boring bits left to do!) which is more grown up sized!

I only had enough of this purple ribbon to do two bows, had wanted five, perhaps I will pick up a metre next time I'm in town, but it looks okay anyway :)

Used up the last of this fabric with this top, well, a few scraps left that I'm sure I will use for something!

Really satisfying knowing that I've got so much use out of half a duvet cover! The other half of it was the blue with ivory daisies, I got it from a charity shop but it originally would have cost more than I would ever contemplate spending on a bed sheet! Some people have more money than sense, especially to give it away in perfect condition to a charity shop! 

Apologies for the usual reason of terrible photos, when the weather co-operates I'm going to take some proper photos (still with my phone but it can't be helped) outside, in the sunshine with my good friend Bethany as my model because she is far slimmer and far more photogenic than I am! This has to be the biggest problem with making clothes that don't fit me, but I wouldn't ever sell them if I could squeeze into them!