My blog is a bit of an 'all or nothing' venture of mine. It seems I do my crafting/baking/cooking in fits and starts.

Yesterday I made my first foray into the mysterious world of jam making. I've watched my mother make jam a few times and I've always wanted to make my own. When I was home in April, I managed to get my mother a Tefal Electric Jam Maker for half price, simply because the box was a bit battered, so she sent me her jam pan which was originally my grandmother's. That's perfect for me, the older a piece of kitchen equipment is, the better it is as far as I'm concerned. By the time the jam pan arrived we were right at the end of the fruit season so I didn't think I'd have time to make jam this year. Until I discovered Tesco were selling punnets of plums for 50p each! So I bought 4 and some sugar and a couple of cooking apples and decided to make jam!

I consulted a few different online recipes and decided to use equal quantities of sugar to plums as this seemed the be the general online consensus, any recipe that used more sugar than plums and people reported it being far too sweet. Earlier in the week I washed, halved an stoned all the plums and whacked them in the freezer as Monkey kept trying to convince me they would go mouldy if I didn't (unlikely as they were 'ripen at home' plums, but nevermind!).

Firstly, in went the plums into the pan with just under 500ml of water and two cooking apples, one I peeled and chopped, one I grated, I wasn't sure what to do so tried both. Here that is in the pan:


I cooked it down for about 30 mins until everything was soft and squidgy:


Then I put in the sugar. There was a LOT of sugar. This is the jam not long after the sugar was added:


I had to bring it up to the boil then keep testing it to see if it was set or not:


And this was the jam right before I bottled it up:


And this is it in massive 500ml kilner jars:


I think it might be too sweet. I was so scared that it wouldn't set that I think I overdid it and now its a very firm set jam, almost at that chewy stage.


But there was really only one way to know for sure how it tasted... try it out with something suitably delicious! So I made scones! I've tried to make scones a couple of times in my life and they've not worked out at all. Having a light hand and not touching things too much is something I am hopeless at. But I was browsing online the other weekend and found this recipe which I knew deserved a try. And you know what, it worked remarkably well!


We made 4 more than that but by the time I remembered I should take a photo, I had set up Monkey and I's afternoon tea up!



The scones and the jam were completely delicious! The recipe was so quick and easy (and messy, but the scones are in the oven just long enough to tidy up!), I know I'll be making them again and again and again.

As a final parting shot, here is my new Kenwood mixing up its first ever cupcake batter. The shape of things to come I hope!

No, don't be alarmed, I didn't have a baby, but I received a gift from my mother that is on a level with having the first child to me! Monkey and I had been looking for a hand mixer to make our cakes with, but we didn't quite expect to be getting this monster machine!

My mother has treated us to the Kenwood KM030 Titanium Chef Timer Mixer. Its INCREDIBLE. I'll start by saying that actually, all my life I lusted after a Kitchen Aid, and they are truly beautiful and iconic. However, being realistic, all the Kitchen Aid does is mix, it does not liquidise or process food so you need extra gadgets for that. And the Kitchen Aids are never as powerful as their Kenwood counterparts. And now I own my Kenwood, I appreciate it VERY much. I'm really impressed by its footprint actually, we only have a small kitchen and it doesn't take up as much room as I expected it to.

My mother came to Watford at the start of the month for a few days but it became clear that the mixer's box was far, far to big and heavy to walk home with, so she paid in store and they delivered it on Monday evening just gone. The box was MASSIVE:


(the sheer size of the box has been demonstrated here by Monkey's hand!)

Here is the mixer on our dining table. You can tell it to mix things for a set period of time and it will! It also counts how long you've been mixing something as well which is useful.

An up close shot!

It came with a really heavy glass liquidiser and a food processor with loads of blade attachments free! There's 4 different places you can plug various attachments into, like ice cream-makers, mills that can grind coffee, mincers, paster makers, its a pretty endless list. You can even buy an attachment that will sift your flour for you. How lazy do you need to be?!

I also got a balloon whisk, a flexi-beater, a K beater and a dough hook for all my mixing needs.

This answers all my kitchen gadget prayers really, couldn't be more pleased with a kitchen gadget if I tried!

Its a good job nobody reads this blog as I've somewhat neglected it!Since my last post a LOT has happened. My Mum came down to Watford to visit me and we had a glorious time, the highlight of which was Mum, Monkey and I enjoying afternoon tea at The Ritz! I ate SO MUCH FOOD it was all completely amazing. Totally worth the price tag. They keep bringing you more food if you let them (or if you're prepared to look like a real guzzler like me!). Also when my Mum was here we went to Canary Wharf and managed to score free goodies bags. I love a goodie bag!:

and the contents:


After my Mum left I started my new job and was only there about a week and a half before I had minor surgery which basically was successful. The day after my surgery my boyfriend and I went to look at a flat, the first we've ever viewed. We didn't like it, too overpriced and really small, you were paying for the postcode and nothing else. Then the same weekend we looked at 3 flats and ended up taking the last flat we saw! Finally, a flat of my own! It all happened so much quicker than we were expecting but it was the best amount of space we had seen and I still look at flats from time to time and I've basically never seen a better flat than ours. Hurrah! The move was extremely stressful as my body was not happy with me for having surgery. But we moved on August 1st and are enjoying being in our own place. Here are some pictures of it the day we got the keys, before we moved our stuff in (it looks very different now! A lot more furniture!):

The front room, which has a dining table and chairs in the bay window. Its a really brilliant sized room. The flat was furnished to a very basic level but we asked the landlord to remove most of the bits and bobs and moved our own stuff in. Looking at these pictures reminds me of how big the flat was till I went mad in Ikea!

The front room from the opposite corner. The closed door is our front door, it leads to a communal hallway so I don't mind the front door opening straight into our front room as at least that door doesn't open directly onto the street! We got rid of that tall shelf thing but kept the massive cupboard as its secretly a computer cupboard!

Into the hallway, on the right is our bedroom and on the left the hallway leads to the bathroom and kitchen.

The bedroom. We asked the landlord to store the bed and brought our own. We moved the entire room around and it looks really different now. What surprised us was when we viewed it, we thought the bedroom was small and the front room was huge, when we moved in we thought the front room wasn't as big as we first thought but the bedroom was massive. A hilarious tale!

Another view of the bedroom. The wardrobe is pulled quite far out as the landlord had everywhere cleaned and painted between the old tenants and us. We kept the wardrobe but moved it. Our bed goes against that wall now.

The rest of the hallway. We whacked a big Ikea Billy bookcase in there and also my Urban Outfitter mirrored pictures from a previous post!That 'light at the end of the tunnel' is our kitchen.

Bathroom. Quite possibly the worst picture I have ever taken! But hey, its a bathroom.

The hallway looking back up to the front room. There is no room for a fridge freezer in the kitchen so its tucked under the stairs for the flat above us in the hallway. We don't mind that at all, our kitchen is still bigger and better than any of the other flats we looked at, some of them were miserably small!

The kitchen! Has enough space to fit all my crazy gadgets, etc in. Yeah its not huge but as I said, significantly better than any other kitchen we saw!And not open plan with the front room so we can stick the washing machine on whenever we want and it doesn't affect our tv viewing!

The rest of the kitchen. We have a dishwasher, AMAZING! Also we have a fridge that we don't use there as well, its literally just for decoration! There wasn't much point asking the landlord to move it, we couldn't really do anything with that space anyway.

So, that's our flat. I should take pictures of it now but its perpetually a mess! We only just finished buying all the furniture and things we wanted and I've been crazy busy at work. I haven't even done any crafting lately! We really like our flat. It only has electric storage heating so I'm currently sat here feeling a bit cold, but nothing can be perfect. I fear we may need to move a lot quicker than we'd hoped because the flat is very, VERY close to my work and given what I do these days, thats a bit of a risk to me. If we could move this whole flat somewhere else though, I'd do it in a heartbeat (installing gas central heating on the way of course!). We had a disaster the other week though, we both got home from work to find our flat COVERED in dust. Mainly the kitchen and hallway but it really did get everywhere. The are ripping the basement flat below us apart and all the dust somehow got into our flat:

It got all over the surfaces and floor:

And it even got IN the cupboards, which was the most devastating part of it:


But our landlord is a nice person and offered us £100 for our troubles.

Finally, a picture from ages ago of me trying to make my lunch look like it walked straight out of a recipebook photoshoot. This is one of my favourite lunches, French Onion Soup, served with creme fraiche and chives and slices of cheese topped baguette. YUM!


And thats all for me for now!

Hello world. I quit my job on Friday and I have two weeks off. Not a lot of crafting has taken place though, I've been trying to battle through my to-do list of boring, grown up admin. Wow, being a grown up is no fun at all! Monkey has been referring to me as a 'WAG' as I basically stay at home and go shopping and do 'nothing'. I thought I'd really enjoy it, but I haven't. Well, I enjoyed making him dinner yesterday and I intend to do some baking today and tomorrow, but I'd rather be at work, in all honesty. Which I guess is the correct answer!

Anyway, two small reasons to post today. Firstly, my oldest friend (who is younger than me by about 2 months, I've just known her the longest out of everyone, thus she is my oldest friend) is getting married this year, which is terribly exciting! I got my wedding invitation a little while ago and although I did let her know via Facebook that I'd be going, etiquette dictates you should really RSVP in writing. So I whipped up a quick card to say 'absolutely I'd love to come!':


As you can see, card making is not really my forte (nothing is to be honest!), but I was fairly pleased with it. The butterfly is flocked and fuzzy, who doesn't like a bit of that?!

I am a member of Brand Alley who have discount sales on various things (I have not linked to a referral page although if you were interested in joining and were going to be kind enough to mention me when you sign up, please let me know and I'll get some sort of referral link, otherwise, have at it without me!). I've had mixed but mostly good service from them, occasionally something I've ordered couldn't be delivered, then I've had my money back and a voucher to say 'sorry', you can't really argue with that. Today, they have a Bombay Duck sale and I'm a big fan! They have this doormat for £10. They have others but they're far too girlie for Monkey to ever ok it. I think I could get away with this on (the others have ladies shoes on them. He's never going to be ok with that!). Do I buy it? Hmmm. We don't technically have a door to call our own, but one day we will! Oh yes, one day! I'll probably spend the rest of my day deliberating over it. Because that's the sort of thing you can get away with when you are off work and behaving like a desperate housewife, your big decisions in life extend to whether or not you should buy a doormat. I should enjoy this kind of mundane existence while it lasts.

There now follows a photodump of all I've been up to 'creatively' in the last few months. I'm officially a World Cup Widow (I don't support anyone. Really. I wouldn't care if Scotland qualified, honestly!), so I may as well spam a blog nobody reads with pictures of things I made/bought/did.

I love to cook, but my real love is baking. However, in all honesty, I hate doing both in this house. I miss being able to call a kitchen 'my kitchen'. Monkey and I get one tiny shelf in a cupboard to store all our cooking utensils, baking trays, bowls, etc. The very thought of getting things out of our solitary shelf is enough to put me off. Very early on in my time living here, I decided to make Nigella Lawson's delicious chocolate pear pudding only to discover there were no mixing bowls! Does.not.compute. So, anyway, my point is, I tend to cook and bake very rarely, when the 'in laws' are not here, where I can be undisturbed (there is nothing in this world worse than a 'supervisor', particularly one that has no idea what they are talking about!) Bank Holidays are always a good time for me to bake, I find, and I coined the phrase 'Bank Holiday Bakeathon' for the two May occasions! I made some Red Velvet cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, a fantastic book which I would recommend to anyone keen on all things sweet! This particular recipe didn't impress me all that much, I didn't pay enough attention to the recipe until I was making it and only then did I really figure out that it was a not-very-chocolatey sponge coloured red with food colouring. Mine didn't even go red, despite buying the recommended food colouring! Still, they did taste good, I just don't think I would bother again.

And a gratuitous macro shot:

Around Christmas time I finally succumbed to the obsession that is all things Cath Kidston. A bit like my obsession with cows really (no, bear with me on this!), I happened to once say I liked cows and cow print and I suddenly ended up with dozens of cow everything; ornaments and cuddly toys and pens and what not. At least Cath is a little more for grown ups than cows! (I still like cows, though. Fear not my mooing friends!). Anyway at Christmas I received both the Sew and Make books and a couple of months ago I finally decided to make the bag that came with Sew! I added a sort-of lining by using the pre-cut pieces to cut out some lovely grey-blue fabric I already had and basically made the whole bag double layered. It was an easy, enjoyable project. I hate buttonholes though, with a passion! I will learn how to make my sewing machine do it for me in future. Here is the finished article:


I'm not sure when I'll find a use for it, but its pretty. The books aren't the most wonderful in the world, Make! especially, as you don't appear to 'make' anything so much as embellish and applique to items you already own or buy for the occasion. However, they are awfully pretty and give inspiration, which is good enough for me!

Monkey and I have big plans to move out and have even taken that exceptionally grown up decision to open a joint savings account to put money into for the deposit/first and last/fees/other things associated with moving. We, of course, can't actually afford anything right now. But it doesn't stop me dreaming. Nor does it stop me buying things 'for our new home'. Mostly its cheap silly things like tea towels with cupcakes on them or a bunch of mugs from the Cath Kidston January sale, other times its usually cookware or bakeware or something similar. So when in TK Maxx the other day, I couldn't help but purchase these:

I've been a fan of Richardson Sheffield knives since I bought a couple to use whilst away at university. The RRP was supposedly well over £100 for this and I think I paid about £25. I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of knife blocks as it's always been my opinion you can trap germs down the slots that you then can't clean out, but nobody's going to force me to use the block anyway.I opened the box for a quick peek (and swiftly stabbed myself in the finger with one of the knives, at least I know they're sharp!) and was really pleased with them.

Through other blogs including Domestic Sluttery I learned of Wysteria Lane a website I love for many reasons; 1)I love Desperate Housewives 2)I love homeware/kitchenware 3)They gave me a £10 off voucher for my first order 4)When my order arrived it was more like a present! (albeit a present I paid for, but aren't they the best kind?!):

Inside was a set of cakestands from Bombay Duck (another website I may grow to love with all my heart, I've asked for a catalogue and will let you know my thoughts on the whole range once I've had a drool over it!):

The stands are gorgeous and according to my Mum, my wonderful late grandmother had something very similar. Well, if it was good enough for her its definitely good enough for me! You can stack them as shown above or use them seperately for a good old fashioned sponge cake!:


After I ordered these, I thought I would continue my online homeware shopping by browsing Urban Outfitters where I purchased two mirrored signs/pictures from their sale:

I reckon they should go in the living room of our new home but Monkey reckons they'd be better in the bedroom. I'm sure I'll win him over eventually! Additionally, a few months ago when browsing in St Albans I bought this from BHS for our 'new kitchen'

Effortlessly patriotic and depicts all that is great about summer....strawberries!

This week I worked my last week at a job I've been in for 14 months, which is something of a record for me, I normally make it to 9 or 10. I'm not a commitment-phobe, I'm merely trying to pack in as much experience as I can before deciding what I really want to do with the rest of my life. I started taking baked goods into work for my colleagues last month and it went down a treat, so I thought it was only fitting to take in lots of cakes and goodies on Friday as a good way to say goodbye:

These are vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting from the above mentioned Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. My cake stand loved getting a bit of action!

These are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting courtesey of Hummingbird, along with Nigella Lawson's girdle-busting chocolate brownies from How to be a Domestic Goddess which has long since been my go-to for all sorts of recipes and recipe ideas. I like to put pecan nuts in my brownies, just so you know. Another gratuitous picture follows (I was testing out a 'food' setting on my camera!)


The baked goods went down a real treat at work and I had an incredible last day.I'm going to miss all the wonderful people there like crazy. I now have two weeks off to sort my life out and then I start a new social care job on June 28th. I hope they like cakes there too, or I'll get terribly terribly fat eating everything I make!

Every good, bad or ugly blog should probably start with an introductory post!So, hello. My name is Loz (well, its not, but apart from work and family interaction, I prefer to be called Loz) and I'm the grand old age of 25. I come from St. Andrews in Scotland, famous for golf and the university (Prince William went there, no less.)A year and a bit ago I gave up joyful coastal town life to move to Watford to live with my partner in crime, who I affectionately call Monkey and we live with his parents, who are affectionately known as the 'in laws'. I work in social care, have a psychology degree and really hope that one day I can be Dr Loz with an exciting and challenging specialism. Perhaps one day. If I can't do that, I do have a pipe dream of running my own little tea room, serving nice homemade soups and cakes and other such things to people. If I win the jackpot on the lottery, I'd definitely go for it.

I've always been into making things. As soon as I could stand upright for long enough periods of time without toppling over, my Grandmother would have me stood on chairs at the kitchen counter or cooker, stirring a soup or a sauce or some cake ingredients. Good health and safety? No. Good way to learn how to do everything? Absolutely. My Grandmother also taught me how to knit and sew, both by hand and on a machine, I have also enjoyed doing tapestries in the past. When I was small my mother would always find the time to bake cakes and biscuits with me regularly. She and my Grandmother had fantastic recipe card boxes, mostly filled with baking recipes and I would get to root through them and choose things to bake. I learned all my basics in my home and my Grandmother's home (we were exceptionally close), anything else I learned from various cookery books or by pure trial and error. I spent one summer working in a kitchen as a food preparation assistant, with a fantastic head chef who treated me like a trainee chef and taught me a lot.

I can't and won't pretend to be an excellent chef, or baker, or knitter, or anything else. I'm nothing short of average at all these things. But I really, really enjoy all of them. Nothing compares to home-cooked food or home-made cakes. Nothing is more satisfying than making something yourself.

I made this blog simply to document the things I've made and seen and things that have interested/excited me in the food/craft world and anything else I feel is worth sharing with the world out there.