Recent days and weekend plans

Still struggling with those post titles...

Anyway, life has been doing that thing, rolling along merrily, so time for an update.

I had another go at my beach hut block, this time after purchasing a little stack of Liberty fat quarters specifically for that purpose.

I changed the block a bit as I was seeing 'shed' more than 'beach hut'.  I am still seeing shed, and have realised that the steepness of my roof is at least partly to blame.  Design number three required!

Clare and Emily for the sand
Rosy Blue for the sky
Betsy for the shed hut walls
Petal and bud for the door

I started a new blog!  I needed somewhere to put details of my workshops and suppliers that I use, maybe even a few tutorials.  You can find it here if you fancy a look!

Last Friday was a momentous day for Miss U-t-B, as she received her first 'proper' pay packet!  She has actually been working since late November as a tutor in an 'Explore Learning' centre.  She loves the work, almost always coming out from her shifts cheerful and full of what she enjoyed (even the ones that start straight after college and continue till 8pm). But due to some administrative problems, she hadn't yet received any pay... A few tears had been shed, mainly when the sales were on - she refused to borrow any money to allow herself to buy a few treats so missed out on the bargains.

On Friday morning before college, there was a whoop of joy as she looked at her bank balance to find she had finally been paid!  She said it was a fairly painless way of having saved up nearly £500, and later treated Mr U-t-B and I to a fish and chip supper to celebrate!  Bless!

Sunday was Mr U-t-B's birthday.  I normally do a big family meal, but with all sorts going on on Saturday, decided to treat him (and me, in that I wouldn't be doing the cooking...) to a pub lunch.  Instead of the lunch, we had a little tea party - I did some baking whilst Miss U-t-B took him to the cinema to see 'Non-Stop' which they both really enjoyed.  He then had the company of his two eldest, their partners and his two grandchildren, with tea and sweet treats thrown in. 

I made these ginger cookies to use up the stem ginger that was in the fridge.  The recipe is Chris Evans' wife Tash's and I can heartily recommend it.  Just don't overcook them, because they are gorgeous when still a bit soft.

(They're still very good when they've had a couple of minutes more in the oven, just watch out for your teeth!)

I also made a nice Genoese-type sponge, which I filled with cream and some blueberries from the freezer.  

This weekend I plan to be making this...

The Family Reunion Dress
Picture courtesy of Oliver and S

I have loved this pattern for a considerable while but have, it is true, always baulked at the price.  But with certain little misses in the family at the age when this dress would be irresistibly cute, I could hold off no longer, and I also came up with a dressmaking challenge which I'd like to do once a month.  My plan is to choose a pattern and fabric early on a Thursday morning, order it before nine from some unwitting online supplier and see if they can deliver in time for a weekend of stitching!  Quite a tall order, but I know some suppliers turn orders round really quickly, and I want to know who they are!

This is the fabric I have chosen for the Family Reunion dress...

'Pretty Floral' from the Yay Day collection by Emily Isabella
Picture courtesy of BirchFabrics

I have chosen a supplier who has given me fast delivery before, so my fingers are crossed, my pins are ready and the sewing machine is warming up!  

Hope you have something good planned for the weekend - I hear it might be time to crack out the barbecues on Sunday!

In which I get myself a new man

Aha! I hear you say!  

'I knew there must be a reason she has been oh-so-very quiet these last couple of months...'

However, maybe I should have capitalised  and punctuated that to make my meaning a little clearer.

In which I get myself a 'New Man'

Mr U-t-B has not been traded in for a different model - oh no! 

(For that sounds like far too much hard work!)

  He has just re-invented himself as a bit of a cook. 

 Don't get me wrong - he has always been able to cook 

(he even taught me how to do a Sunday roast many years ago)  

but in recent years it has mostly been me that did the daily cooking.

But now, in addition to a new pot of soup every other day, he produces delicious dinners.  Take, for example, this evening's chicken and leek pie, which we half demolished before I even had a chance to take a snap of it...

But most exciting of all, he has decided to indulge in a spot of baking.  Here's a coffee and walnut cake in the making!

(Holey jumper as he was in the middle of painting windowsills.  Honest!)

Made with walnuts he'd recently brought back from friends in France, it was yummy!

Aside from having cake to eat, Mr U-t-B has decided that cake baking definitely has its plus points...

A return to childhood!

I did a 'Technical Challenge'...and failed!

Inspired by the Spring sunshine and this book...

...which was a lovely Mother's Day present from Miss U-t-B

(even if I'm not sure where on the groaning shelves I am going to put it)...

I decided to do one of Paul Hollywood's 'Technical Challenges' from the last series of The Great British Bake-Off.

At least I wasn't going to have to do it under the watchful and steely gaze of the piercing blue eyes!

I fancied something a bit physical, so settled upon the hand-made delights of 'Iced Fingers'.

How hard could it be - after all I had the full instructions in front of me, and all the useful 'fail-safe' tips that the contestants were deprived of.

I carefully weighed all the ingredients and settled to the task of 'massaging' the ingredients together for four minutes.  I made the disastrous mistake of massaging with both hands (not the one, as shown in the photo) so that I very soon had a yeasty-smelling gloop all over my hands, which was then transferred to nearby door handles and containers as I had failed to have flour ready for the kneading stage!

My mixture, even after ten minutes kneading, was a lot wetter than that shown in the photo.  I'm beginning to question my digital scales.  I proceeded with the proving and knocking back the dough, then weighed and shaped the buns.  Given the fact that the recipe was meant to make 12 x 70g buns, and I had 14, I think my scales may be for the bin!

I did not manage to make each of my buns the requisite 12.5cm long, and once in the oven they browned somewhat unevenly.  Had I been on 'The Great British Bake-Off', I think the lack of uniformity would have counted against me.  

And the fact that I decided that I couldn't be bothered to get a piping bag out and fill each bun with some left-over whipped cream, and pipe a line of strained strawberry jam down each one, instead adopting a 'do-it-yourself-if-you-can-be-bothered' approach, would have sealed my fate, and my future in the programme would have been doomed...

But my!

Did 

they

 taste

 G

 O

O

 D

!

PS Drawing my giveaway tomorrow at 7pm!

On becoming a Biscuiteer

Brrrr! It's turned a bit chilly here, so here I sit beneath a blanket, in my jim-jams, though it's only a shade after seven in the evening!  Truth be told, I was up very early this morning, after a rather wakeful night, as I had to take Mr U-t-B off to Gatwick airport, so that's my excuse for being ready for bed at such a time.  

If I can stay awake long enough I will once again be using this present...

...which my dear husband persuaded me to let him get me at Lidl on Saturday!  

I was in denial that such a thing could help me with some of the WIPs I have awaiting my attention.  

After all, I've always had 20/20 vision, so even if the presbyopia monster seems to be running close behind me have caught me up and tanned my hide, surely things weren't that bad?  

Well, my goodness they obviously are!

This bit of kit makes such a difference - well worth the £29.99 Mr U-t-B lavished on my pressie!

(I'm only mentioning the price in case anyone out there wants to dash out and buy one, not as an indication of my worth to him!)

 

It took a wee while to get used to using it, but the magnifier makes easy work of my evenweave linen cross-stitch!  This WIP is now properly underway again (AGAIN!  This project has had more stops and starts than a London bus...)  Expect a ta-dah sometime in the not too distant future, because I will most certainly be celebrating when I've finished the last of the eighteen cows!!!

On Saturday afternoon, I decided to take time to enjoy a bit of biscuit-y baking, inspired by one of my recent bargain purchases...

This was definitely not a job for when one was in a rush!  First the biscuit dough was made, rolled out and cut, then chilled, cooked and cooled.  Next, the making of the Royal Icing, the piping of the outlines, the mixing up of different colours, the thinning to make flood icing and the flooding of the shapes, then the polka dotting.  And this was for the simplest of designs, in only three colours!

It was a good practice - next time I will be braver and have a go at something more detailed.

In the end, with the help of my retro-style Tala Icing Bag Set and the squeezy plastic ketchup bottles I bought at the catering shop for next to nothing, I managed to produce a selection of polka-dotted biscuits...

I learnt that a) they look best if the outline is done in the main colour (not white like I did for the pink and blue one) and b) round biscuits are unforgivingly hard to ice neatly.

Miss U-t-B was happy to take the resultant tin-full to school today, where her classmates declared me to be 'adorable' for having made them!

Here's something that made me chuckle today to finish...

Anyway, there seems to be a gentle moo-ing coming from nearby, so as I haven't put myself to the point of sleep with typing, I will switch my magical LEDs on and get stitching!

Bah-humbug banisher

I cannot tell you the excitement Miss U-t-B and I have had the last couple of afternoons!

If you ever need to get in the Christmas spirit (and I'm not talking about drowning the chaos and stress out with a bottle of whiskey!) I can highly recommend what we got up to together.

Here is the result...

Our first ever Gingerbread House!

We used pretty much this recipe, from a Good Housekeeping magazine.  I have never found a Good Housekeeping recipe that didn't work out well.    Our recipe had two tablespoons of ginger (which sounds like way too much)  instead of 10mls, which I think is two teaspoons, but it tastes great!  We changed the house dimensions from what was suggested, because we wanted a tall house with lofty gables, something nestled deep into the snow, like all our favourites when we go skiing.

I have signed up to Pinterest (thanks Lakota for the suggestion and the invitation - my life is definitely the richer for it, though I do seem to be short of time these days...) and you can find oodles of inspirational pictures on there.  We were going to heap colourful sweets on our house (and were looking forward to shopping for these, and polishing off any leftovers) but once we were under way with the royal icing Miss U-t-B decided that it might spoil it.  She said it reminded her of every arty thing she ever did when she was young, where it looked great at a point along the way, and then she overdid it and spoilt it!

At the front of the house is a little gingerbread lady talking to her rocking horse (as you do).  She looks like she's related to the gingerbread boy from Shrek with that leer!

At the back we've gone a bit alternative, with a dalek!  If you have a cookie cutter, I say use it - never mind the theme!

The icicles were fun to do, but they do have a habit of dropping off!

Miss U-t-B cut the little heart shaped biscuits in half to make cute shutters for the windows.

And, inspired by Holly Bell (from 'The Great British Bake Off')'s video...

Christmas Cottage Cake from Stupid on Vimeo.

...we had to do stained glass windows!

Miss U-t-B had the forethought to put a candle inside before we built the house, placing it just near enough the front door to be lit with a candle in a pair of tweezers...

Looks like gingerbread lady has somewhere nice and toasty to warm her poor frozen tootsies when she goes inside!


Miss U-t-B has now abandoned all other career ideas and is planning on life as Gingerbread House Maker to the Stars (and Anyone Else Who Wants One).  She recognises that the opportunities for money-making will be somewhat limited - a couple of weeks in the year to make enough money to get her through the year, but hey-ho...


So if you're still waiting for 'the' mood to hit you, I can't recommend anything more powerfully bah-humbug banishing than to get together with someone nice, put on some Christmas tunes, fill the house with the smell of gingerbread, whip up some royal icing and get merry with the icing bag!