All things LOVEly

Belated Happy Valentines my Blogettes!

I have been super busy writing blog posts and taking pictures, writing tutorials and testing patterns to share with you all and I hit slump with my internet connection.  It's still not resolved but today is ever so slightly better than it has been :O(

So here we go with a catch up on what I've been up to ...

For Valentine's Day I went totally overboard as I do :O) and made everything I could possibly do heart shaped.  I even cut my strawberries out (above) using heart shaped cookie cutters.  Simply slice the strawberry into thick slices and using a really small cookie cutter cut out your shapes.  Perfect!  Fiddly but pretty cute :o)

I also went mad making latte's just so I could use my love stencils.  I'm normally a strong black americano type of girl but I went mad for a few days and had a few lattes to perfect my stencilling technique.

On the eve of Valentines day I had an evening tea with my friend Carole, complete with heart shaped sugar lumps (tutorial on how to make them here) raspberry buns iced with white chocolate and topped with heart strawberries and shortbread biscuits iced with white chocolate and red heart sprinkles :O) 

The week continued with lots of heart shaped lovelies including lots of these heart shaped pancakes (recipe here).

and even a heart shaped breakfast  

and lots more but I'm pretty sure you've had enough by now :O) 

Hope you all had a lovely Valentines' whatever you were doing. 

Sorry again for lack of posts.

More to come including details on this little chappie ...

Hope everyone's having a lovely relaxing Sunday x

Sugar for my honey

So Valentines Day is approaching and I've been thinking of things to make.  I have seen these sugar cubes appear around the web for sometime now so I decided to make my own. 

They are SUPER EASY to make and SUPER QUICK 

Honest!!

You only need 3 ingredients:

Sugar

Food Colouring & Water 

To make the heart shapes I used an ice cube tray but you can use a cookie cutter if you don't have an ice cube tray.  However, it's SO MUCH quicker with a tray.  

Keep an eye out in Lidl for these, super cheap but great for making chocolates, mini jellys, novelty ice cubes etc

How do you make it? I hear you ask.  Well it's quite simple really, so simple you will probably think, is that it? when I tell you.

Place sugar in a bowl (for the ice cube tray I used approx 1 old fashioned tea cup full of sugar), add 1 tbsp water and 1 drop of pink colouring (or whatever colouring you are using.  The more you add the deeper the colour)

Mix together until it has the texture of damp sand.  Spoon into the ice cube trays making sure to push it down with your finger.  I don't have a picture of this bit as I got way to excited and carried away!!  Yes, seriously I did :O) 

If you don't have an ice cube tray you can use a cookie cutter but this is pretty tedious, too much so for me!!

You have to spoon the mixture into the cookie cutter and then gently, I mean REALLY GENTLY push it out of the cutter and repeat for each cube.  I really love my boyfriend a lot but I'm not sure he would appreciate such effort ... especially as he doesn't even take sugar in his tea/coffee.  I'm only making them to add to my table of treats that I have planned for Valentines Day :O)

For the ice cube trays you leave the mixture for about an hour to dry out and then gently lay the ice cube tray on a plate and turn out.  (Kind of like when you make a pineapple upside down cake).

I have one of those sandwich trays which is perfect for this kind of job :O) 

The cuteness is just tooooo much !

I coudn't wait until Valentine's Day though.  

I had a friend come round for tea this evening and she got them, with a couple to take home for her pony or boyfriend or maybe one each :O)

So there you go cute little sugar lumps for your lovely.

So are you going to make some?

Let me know if you do, would love to see what other versions people come up with?  I've already been scouring my drawer of cookie cutters planning the next batch of sugar lumps.

So cute

So simple

So cheap 

So lovely 

Have a lovely weekend peeps x

Love Knitting

No this is not me announcing my love of knitting, although love knitting I do.  But more a little shout out to a lovely website Loveknitting.com where you can shop for all things knitty in one place.

It's was set up by a group of peeps in London (oh how I miss you London) last April.  I know it's taken me this long to tell you all about it !!

It's a lovely site, so clean and easy to use (well I think it is). But not only that the feel of the company is nice too.   Take a look at their values listed on their site.

I have to say each time I receive an email from them I certainly do have a smile on my face so high five guys (not sure where that came from!?) you are certainly sticking to your values.

So I digress (you should be used to me by now).  The site.   Not only is it packed full of yarns and needles but there ares ome lovely buttons too.  I just LOVE these wooden heart buttons, oh sew cute!

On the subject of buttons I love how there are different options to search on the site.  See ... you can search by type, material, size and (ooooh smiling !!) colour.  I just love the cute little button graphics. Come on your smiling too ... aren't you?

Can you feel a theme coming on here?  Maybe I should have kept this post for Valentines.  OMG LoveKnitting guys you can do up Valentine Knitting kits - so much better than a bunch of roses - a bunch of red heart knitting needles swit swoooooooo what better way to say I love you. Am I brilliant or am I brilliant?

 As with the buttons I love the search options.  Here for patterns you can search by designer, yarn weight etc etc

and the same for yarn - including ... oh yeah here comes another smile .... cute little balls of yarn graphics ...

Ok I get that your cheeks are sore from smiling but if they are not and you feel like smiling some more get yourself over the loveknitting.com.  No I don't work for them and nor am I getting paid to write this I just think when you find somewhere nice to shop it's nice to share that info :O)

Keeeeep smiling and Keeeeeeeep Stitching!

M x

Happy Valentines Day

Wishing you all a very Happy Valentines' Day

xxx

Valentines Day

It's coming soon

Valentines Day

So here I am

working away

making cards with lots of love

for you to give

on Valentines Day

xxxx

Love is all around

I've been sitting at my laptop since 9.30 this morning working on a Bullying assignment.  Not sure what that has to do with an Art & Craft course, all I know is it's due in next week so I've got to get it finished. 

 

As I'm now on my 'lunch break' I thought I would update my blog.  Hmm, seemed like a good idea at 12.45 .... but over an hour later I'm now itching to get crafting and very tempted to do some online shopping. I'm also being lured in by my google reader which is just bursting with updates from all the lovely blogs I follow.  I daren't look at them though, otherwise I'll be here until all hours! Hopefully I will have tomorrow to catch up, guilt free, when my assignment is complete.

With Valentines just around the corner the internet is full of lots of lovey doviness so I thought i'd share some of the lovely things I've come across ...

Magnetic notice board from green and co

Love print from caroline mcgrath

heart chopping board from here

wooden hearts from molly cupcakes

love and happiness ribbon from here  I think I love the spools more than the ribbon though.

 

 gorgeous woven heart ribbons from creative flourish 

This is only a tiny tiny collection of the things I've found ... more to come soon. 

Hope you're having a lovely weekend.  Got to get back to my assignment :o(

Love is all around

Hope you all had a lovely Valentines Day x

Mine wasn't exactly romantic in a lovey dovey way but I did have a day filled with roses and chocolate and lots of love :o)

I wasn't swept off my feet by prince charming with a dozen velvet red roses, however I did get theses gorgeous pink ones ...

and this fabulous rose print bag

from .............. my lovely mum :o) Thanks mum x

In the afternoon I met up with the girls and we celebrated Emma's birthday with yummy terrys chocolate orange cake (based on a recipe for Birthday cake from Nigella's How to Eat)
It's made with condensed milk melted in a pan with a melted terry's chocolate orange mmmmm and the ganache coating is a carton of cream metled with another terry's chocolate orange D I V I N E!

It didn't last long

Still not content with all that loving I made this pillow ...

xxx

Love is all around

Ok, the weekend of card making has paid off and I have a nice collection of valentines for all you love birds out there.

I've been making them in my 'craft' room which was actually getting to a lovely tidy state until I started making these cards - just look at the mess of that desk !!!



I hope the link works below, if not you can go directly to my flickr account to see all the valentine cards ... and actually all my other cards too :o) Otherwise, I've attached a couple of pics below ... just in case.

Remember the post about the red clay? Well here's how I used some of the things I did with it

www.flickr.com

Sorry about the awful picture quality. Anyone any tips on taking pics of cards ?? Feel free to leave me a comment if you have as they seem to be getting worse instead of better!