Embellish your World

Snow good

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Over 6" of the white stuff fell from around 8pm Saturday night, throughout the night for us to awake to a world of white Sunday morning. Despite having been unwell with a high temperature, cough and cold Jamie was desperate to get out there (as was his super eager big brother) so we went for a little walk, wrapped up super warm and rewarded ourselves with hot chocolate to warm up after! Not the greatest photos (taken with my phone) as I was too scared to fall and break my good camera in the slippery conditions! Still, they make me smile and capture our little adventure out.

That hot chocolate, coupled with three course meal at Jamie's Italian restaurant in BlueWater on Friday lead to a small 1/2lb weightgain this week. I also missed a week of Boxercise but plan on getting back on track first thing tomorrow. (the food was soooo good though, highly recommend it!)

Turning 40!

No longer 30 anything I turned 40 On Thursday and was treated to a divine meal out with my beloved hubby.

 

We ate at Jamie Oliver and Adam Perry Lang's Barbecoa restaurant opposite St Pauls cathedral in London. It was quite possibly the best meal I have ever eaten, truly delicious and I was surprised when my dessert was delivered with a birthday message written in chocolate on the side of the plate! Truly a special touch! We enjoyed a glass (or 2 or 3!) of bubbly in addition to calamari for starters, lamb kebabs for main and a vanilla panna cotta with orange creme!

 

 

Friday evening was Luau time as I hosted a Hawaiian BBQ in my garden with friends, Flowers Leis, hula skirts and some amazing shirts. My friend Clare made me an awesome cake and I baked and prepared food to accompany the BBQ meat.

 

I now have a tonne of photos to scrap and next weekend is scheduled away with crafty friends so I have the week to prepare and can then be a scrapping machine all weekend!!  Until then I think maybe another hours sleep or two may be in order to recover from my celebrating, must be my age!!

This weekend I have been mostly...

...preparing for my 40th Luau party in just four weeks time. After seeing some mini desserts in an M&S foody magazine I ventured to the local 99p store and bought plastic wine glasses and have ordered some inexpensive plastic shot glasses on ebay too. I then spent yesterday practicing making a variety of desserts to see which tasted/looked better. I made

• Raymond Blanc simple Chocolate Mousse
• A tangy lite Lemon Mousse
• Mini berry trifles
• Orange and Mandarin Cheesecakes
• Pineapple cupcakes

I also have the ingrediants to make a cocount dessert native to Hawaii called Haupia.

 
So the outcome of my testing/practice session was that the Choc Mousse needs toning down, maybe with a milk choc layer between the dark choc and the whipped cream, and I'll be adding a wafer roll too.   The lite whipped cream I bought melts too quickly and I either need full fat or to whip and pipe my own. The Lemon Mousse I needed to whisk the eggwhites more to enable it to set quicker and it could be served in a smaller portion (as will the Choc Mousse). The trifle, cheesecake and cupcakes were all perfect but I think I will replace the crumbed sponge in the trifle with a disc of sponge cake so that the layers are neater and the custard sits on top of the sponge.

Next weekend I am practicing rice, cous cous and potato salads - so anyone with any fab (especially if they are lower in fat to balance out desserts!) recipes, please send them my way.

I have also finalised my ATDML Cybercrop classes and am thrilled with how well all the planning is going for that. Did you see the sneak peak of what the team have been creating? Have a looksie on Created by ATDML!!

This trooper is having a day off

 
After a very busy few days (and lack of childcare today) I decided to book the day off work.  Plenty to still do of course but I did promise myself that I would not stress so much about the doing of stuff today but enjoy the time with my boys and manage whatever I could in between.  I've done a little blog hopping, collected plug-in radiators from Argos (our heating is up the blink again), topped up baking cupboard (thanks Mr Tesco) and plan on baking this afternoon once son #2 is collected from school.  Whilst blog hopping I uncovered The Pink Whisk, by the lovely

Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire

Contestant on BBC2's The Great British Bake Off

She has a fab looking recipe for mega-calorie laden Chocloate and peanut butter bars that we will be creating - nom! nom! nom!

I spent an hour or so this morning doing my LSNED pages for the last few days,

 

and also finishing off my project from last night which was a decorated wooden box to house all my Idealogy/7G and other metal scrappy bits. This was inspired by the decopatch stall at Ally Pally where I may have bought some more decopatch papers and a long tailed cat and papier mache chicken to alter as well. Thought I would replicate the technique with standard scrapping papers (mostly 7G papers used here with a smidge of Bo Bunny Mammarazzi thrown in, plus packaging from Idealogy and 7G. 

 
One more step in the right direction of a tidy and organised craft space!  One thing about tidying up is that you come across items you've had ages and generally think to yourself "Why did I buy this?" but occassionally something re-inspires you - like this 12x12 overlay I've had for some time which features a fabric month label too (also been in my scrapping stash forever) I get such pleasure from creating stuff using older products or scraps left over - just call me frugle!