Christmas supplies.

Good Morning! How are you today? I hope you are having a super day, even if it is a Monday.

Now i know some of you will hate the fact that i am mentioning Christmas already (although i think i have been very reserved, it is nearly November after all!). But i wanted to show you the wonderful bits and bobs i have bought in order to make Christmas cards.

I was having a browse around Etsy (as i tend to do) and i came across these wonderful vintage postage stamps ranging from the 1930s to the 1980s.....i had to have them! I'm not sure what i am going to do with them yet though i need to have a think about it.

I also got myself a couple of rubber stamps, very cute and Christmassy!

I will of course show you once i have got making. Right, i best get to it.......

Sloe gin time again!

Yay! I love sloe gin. Really really love it. In fact i love it so much that the batch i made last year is nearly gone which is shouldn't be because you're not meant to drink it for a year. Naughty me.

Luckily i do still have half a bottle which i hid from myself. It's now been a year so i can crack it open guilt free. Hooray!

In light of this, i went sloe picking the other day with my dad. Well i say sloe picking, there wasn't many to pick! Sloes are in short supply this autumn. Very upsetting. I had to search and search and even then my dad had to let me have all the ones we both picked otherwise there wouldn't have been enough. Thanks dad!

If you have never made sloe gin before then you should, as it's really rather easy. This is all you need:

 

1. Sloes (sometimes easier said than done).

2. Sugar.

3. Gin.

4. An empty bottle.

The only time consuming bit is pricking each sloe a few times with a knife (or cocktail stick if you have one). Then it's just a case of filling up the bottle with sloes. Then sugar. Then gin. Easy. I usually add about a third of a bottle of sloes, a third of sugar and then top it all off with gin. However this time as i had added the gin before the sugar i just added as much sugar as i could fit in the bottle!

You then give it a good shake and leave it. Shake it once a day for a week and then once a week for a few months. Then leave it as long as you can, preferably a year but i never quite seem to be able to manage that. Happy drinking!

(You may notice that the bottle in the third picture doesn't look like the one in the other two. This is because i forgot to take photos after i had made the sloe gin, but that photo shows what it would look like after you'd given it that first good shake up!)

ArtMind Etc "99 feelings"

I love this! ArtMind is the creative brilliance of a lady called Mitsy, a mainly minimal ceramic artist. She created a project called "99 feelings": A series of babushkas with additions or textures to represent different feelings.

To watch a video on "99 feeling" on the artists blog click here.

She also has an Etsy shop here. I want so many of these little lovelies, i don't know how you could ever choose just one!

Sorry i've been a little quiet...

......i've been busy moving!

I had to move out of my little flat for a while. The roof has been leaking for forever and the roof had to be taken off and rebuilt, to fix the leak. This meant that i had to make somewhere else my home for a while.

However, this weekend i got to move back (yay!). But it means that i am now faced with a million boxes to unpack. Who knew i owned so much stuff!

It's actually a great excuse to get rid of all the clutter and the bits and bobs i no longer want. I've decided to have a thorough sort out. This may take a while......

Helen Dardik

Good morning! Are you well? I do hope so. It seems like everyone is dropping like flies at the moment with some sort of nasty cough or cold. Hopefully you're not one of them.

Today i wanted to show you the talents of a clever lady called Helen Dardik. Helen has a wonderful blog called Orange You Lucky and a cute Etsy shop called Orange Studio.

Her colourful prints are fun and quirky and i love them! What do you think?

You can even buy wrapping paper featuring her designs here. The woodland bear wrap is a particular favorite (but then you would have guessed it would be!).

But they're all so lovely it's gonna be hard to choose which to buy. Might have to pick a few......

Apple tart tatin.

Good morning! Are yo well? Enjoying the change of seasons and snuggling up at home with the heating on? I am. Unfortunately i have picked up a cold so i can snuffling as well as snuggling. But that's ok, it's to be expected as the leaves change and it seems everyone is sneezing and sniffing at the minute.

Yesterday i took my poor ill self off to my mum's for a roast dinner. It cures all ills in my book. We decided to make a apple tart tatin. We loosely followed a Jamie recipe but changed it quite a bit and made it our own.

We used the little apples from my mum's garden as well as the damson gin i made last year. It could not have been simplier.

First you make a caramel with the damson gin. Get a large oven proof pan and cook the gin with sugar, vanilla paste and cinnamon for a few minutes until it turns into a light caramel. Whilst this is happening you core, peel and half the apples.

These are then added to the caramel and cooked for 10  minutes or so. Roll out the puff pastry and then lay it on top of the apples and tuck in the edges.

The whole thing then goes into the oven for 25-30 minutes at about 180C. It should come out looking like the picture below!

Now comes the tricky bit! You need to turn the tart out onto a large plate. You need nerves of steel and a confident swift action. Done!

 

And there you have it a very tasty, easy and cheap pudding. It was very tasty,  perfect autumnal naughtiness!