As I mentioned in my last post, I got a breadmaker from Monkey for my birthday. I've had conversations with some of the other women at work about how receiving items like that for your birthday or for Christmas would, to them, be the worst thing ever. To me, its BRILLIANT. I love kitchenware and kitchen gadgets. If the house was burning down I'd blatantly bail out my Kenwood mixer, my laptop, my sewing machine and now my breadmaker before I'd give much thought to anything else. A breadmaker is one of those things I always thought would be good to own, but I never really looked into it much and it seemed like the were quite expensive. Monkey was struggling to come up with a birthday present for me then chanced upon the breadmaker and the rest, as they say, was history! He bought it a little while before my birthday and then out of the blue, The Gadget Show on C5 reviewed breadmakers and mine was on it! Mine won out of the three, which he was REALLY relieved about!

I have this one, and I've used it most weeks since my birthday. To be honest, I haven't been that adventurous yet, I tried the 4hour white loaf cycle and then I tried the 1hr55min rapid bake white loaf cycle and I've kind of stuck with that the last three weeks! The 4hr cycle does produce a better loaf but there's nothing wrong with the rapid bake setting. The machine came with lots of recipes, some of them sound amazing so I'm looking forward to making a few different things whenever we get bored of fresh white bread (do you ever get bored of fresh white bread?!)

Here is my breadmaker in the flesh:


It couldn't be simpler, really. You pull the bread pan out of the machine and put the kneading blade in. You then chuck in the ingredients, putting the yeast on the very bottom and the water in last, like so (it doesn't look pretty!):


You then select the settings you want, which probably takes the longest time of every step in the process!


You then wait till it beeps and whip out a beautiful load of bread!

(today I was making some more curtains, so my bread and the cooling rack were relegated off the dining room table where my sewing stuff was and were instead put onto my craft table).

The only negative bit is you don't get that 'fresh bread baking' smell while its cooking. You do get it when it's out and cooling though, delicious. Im promising myself I'll splash out soon and try different loaves! You can make a ciabatta loaf as I have been asked to make my lasagne next Sunday, I should really bake a fresh ciabatta to go with it.

I've never tried any other bread maker before, but I can still recommend this one to anyone considering getting one!

(Please note, I've not been paid by Panasonic to review their machine and I'm not affiliated to them in any way, besides being a very satisfied customer!)

Long time, no blog. We're very much settled into our amazing new house. My 'brother in law' has been round a couple of times putting up some curtain tracks. Two of the windows had nothing with which to hang curtains on, which we have now remedied!

I'm a bit of a curtain fanatic. Shop bought unlined eyelet nasties just will not do for me. I've always believed that curtains are really important in a house, both for artistic and insulating purposes. Having a good pair of lined curtains makes a massive difference!

When I first moved to Watford the curtains in my bedroom were a bit hopeless. They weren't lined, they weren't wide enough to close properly and they were a bit too long, so all the heat from the radiator below the window got sucked up into them and not into the room. So I made a pair over a couple of weekends. It was a nightmare, as I had no space to cut my fabric, no space to leave the ironing board up in between uses. And they're by no means perfect, I didnt quite get the panels right when I sewed the lengths of fabric together and the linings are a bit wonky. However, they worked perfectly and for a first attempt, I was very proud of them! I also made some voiles as the voiles I had were lacy and floraly. Urgh. When we moved into the flat I had no need for the curtains but I kept them regardless, and when we moved into this house, the curtains in the bedroom were so incredibly thin (not great when there is a streetlight directly outside the window) and too long and just...blah.And again, the lacy floral voiles were in abundance. So two days after we went in, my love curtains and voiles got a new lease of life in my bedroom here. They look great!


You sort of have to take my word for it, as the I took these pictures this evening! But the curtains and the voiles work beautifully.

Over this bank holiday I set about making curtains for some of the other rooms. I started with the dining room. Due to where the window is positioned, I decided to make one long curtain rather than a pair. I will be doing the same for the second bedroom as well as that window is directly above the dining room. I chose Cecilia fabric in grey from Ikea, bought a whopping 25metres of thermal lining (for this and the other curtains!) and set to work! This evening, just before dinner, the curtain was hung and done!


Lights on and lights off. Again, the evening was the wrong time to photograph my curtains. Oh and please excuse all the mess next to the curtains. I keep all my craft supplies on a storage unit next to that window, and its in desperate need of a sort out!

Curtain making is not difficult at all, and there are tonnes of online guides. All you need is plenty of space and some patience. Oh, and thick skin. Yet again I am COVERED in pin holes. I look forward to making the second bedroom's curtain next weekend. Unfrotunately the curtains I was most excited about, the front room ones, are on hold as we are having some, errr, issues getting a new curtain track up (the issue being that the wall about the window is totally hollow. HOW SCARY?!

In other crafty news, I've been doing a lot recently. It was my birthday in early April and Monkey bought me a breadmaker! I am completely in love with it. I'd never have bought one for myself but thats the best type of present I think! I made a loaf today, the rapid bake setting produces a great loaf in 1hr55, for absolutely no effort on my part! Unfortunately I completely forgot to put salt in today's loaf. What an idiot! It makes a huge difference. I've been baking loads as well. But I will save that for another post. I must get back into blogging. I've built up quite a large list of people I follow on here, but am shameful in how infrequently I update mine!

Hello all. I'm moving house in less than a week. And of course, that means I simply HAVE to post an update on here rather than do any packing, sorting, cleaning, etc.

Its been a long while since I last updated. I had a lovely Christmas time and was thoroughly spoiled by everyone. My lovely other half bought me a candle-making set and whilst I haven't use it yet I'm really looking forward to trying it out! it came with one fragrance and some colours and there's 2KG of wax so that'll keep me busy when I get round to it!

We enjoyed making some Christmas decorations as well this year. We bought a really cheap Argos value tree, but we tried to liven it up as best as we could by making some of our own decorations and by buying a value pack of baubles from Argos which we sat down and decorated with pens and glitter paint and various things. And I bought some felt and made a couple of felt decorations. I'd post pictures but really, Christmas is well and truly over!

What I would like to share with you is the present I made for my OH's sister and her fiance. I really struggled to think of something for them, when I decided I'd like to get them monogrammed mugs with their intials on them. I looked at a few websites but I was low on time (and money), and needed something immediately. Then I stumbled upon a tutorial for making your own and I thought 'hmmm, hobbycraft isn't far away!' so I took a stroll down there and picked up everything I needed for very little money:


The first mistake I made was buying white transfer paper rather than black or graphite coloured transfer paper. So I used that old fashioned pencil tracing trick and made a square of graphite transfer paper by rubbing an artists graphite stick that I may have liberated from my GCSE art days and using that to get the fronts to transfer. I scoured the internet for various free fonts and chose a few and tested them out in word before choosing my favourite, which I printed out and transferred onto the mug:



This took a little while and I had to wash it off and do it again for one of them, but once I had these marks, it was time to use the special porcelaine pen to fill in the design! For a first attempt, it didn't come out too badly. A little wobbly, in future I will buy the thinner nib as this one was thick and a little hard to control:



These then went into the oven on a low heat for about 20 minutes which sets the paint and makes the mugs dishwasher safe. And looking entirely identical to the last pictures, here they are:


I then filled each one with some lindor truffles and wrapped them. They were apparently very well received by my 'sister-in-law' and her fiance so I'm glad about that! I'd definitely do it again, it was fun!

I made my own wrapping paper this year as well which everyone was really impressed by. Its funny how the simplest easiest things can really look impressive to others isn't it? I just bought a big pack of brown paper and a set of 4 Christmas-themed stamps off ebay and a pack of ink pads and got to it! And I bought some traditional brown luggage labels to make the gift tags, which worked nicely:


I got into a habit before Christmas of baking something for my co-workers for our Monday team meeting. They LOVED it, they especially loved it when I took cupcakes in in bakery boxes (again, it never fails to amaze me, what people are impressed by! I just bought them from a bakery for 20p each!). The carrot ones and black bottom ones when down a real treat!

Black bottomed cupcakes in their box!

Carrot cupcakes fresh out the oven. Such a delicious, moist receipe!


As I said at the start of the post, we're moving house. I've loved the flat, but some people at work have found out where I live, which is not that great for me. We're moving into a 2 bed terraced house with a garden, which is a huge step up from a 1 bed flat! Its a small house, but still. It needs a little bit of work, it needs to be redecorated and I need to make some curtains and things. Its a rental property but the estate agent thinks that not only will we be allowed to redecorate but the landlord might actually give us some money towards doing so. I am SO excited and have been picking colour schemes for days now. The only thing getting in the way is the dark blue carpet in the front room and my wish to have some pale green on the walls (all our front room furnishings such as cushions, throws, rug etc are green), but that will clash horribly with the carpet, which we can't do anything about. I guess I'll have to move the green rug to another room and start again with our front room furnishings. maybe a nice pale soft blue? Don't want anything to make it look too cold though!

Last thing I want to talk about is the fact that I've taken up knitting again. I found a local knitting group that hasn't been going for too long and first started going a couple of weeks ago and I love it. Its a small group but I've been having a lovely time, the ladies I've met there are really nice and its been great fun. I haven't done a lot of knitting outside of knitting club, but I haven't really been doing any crafting at all lately, been too busy!

This has been the most slap-dash post I've ever made, but really, I've been meaning to post up this stuff for weeks and weeks and I am aware that I can't pretend I don't have a LOT to crack on with today! Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

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!