pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Tomorrow is the day. We’re snapping away all day on the 25th of the month for an entire year starting tomorrow. Are you with us? All you gotta do is take pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

Wendy has made her own book—check hers out if you are stuck at where to start!
Susan is egging on Friday!
Sophie is all set to go!
Jo has made a book and it is looking divine!
Cameron is joining us!
Mary seems absolutely giddy about her album so far!

On UKScrappers, I’ve seen declarations of intent from PJ, Debbie, Julie, Leigh, Emma, Anso, Niki, Willow, Fay, Ali and more.

And you know…you can even join us to take pictures with no intention of the scrapbook part. That’s okay too. One thing at a time. But first?! Take pictures tomorrow!

Spread the word…declare your intentions, blog this picture, email a friend and get your camera battery charged!

Flickrheads: join our Flickr group here to share what you snap.

{More info here and here and one more file to download here tomorrow!}

xlovesx

PS: Comment below to receive an email alert that will remind you when the 25th is approaching each month for the next year so you can remember to take pictures. (No other messages and I won’t sell your address, I promise.)

Comment [530]

Since The Boy went on a cookery course at Leiths, I must admit I have been learning a great deal from our collection of three Leiths bibles. Everything in there is so sensible and accurate and we haven’t made anything from any of them yet that didn’t turn out, and that’s high praise. But they lack in one thing that I find rather important…visual stimulation. I am sure the bible moniker comes from the sheer amount and detail of prose contained within, while mostly letting you use your own imagination for the pictures. And for whatever reason, it’s the pictures that make me fall in love with food.

Specifically Béa’s pictures. And Béa’s food.

La Tartine Gourmande is, in my opinion, the classiest food website in existence. My goodness, the woman can cook amazingly, take photographs of which the web is not worthy and manage to tell an amazingly wonderful food story practically everyday. What’s not to love? (Also, her web design is just perfect.) As an American ex-pat in England, her stories of being a French ex-pat in America make me giggle. Giggle in that way when you know exactly what the American is going to say and in a way it makes you cringe and yet you know it will be said anyway. It’s okay; I have been away long enough now that I find the funny questions quite endearing. But she retells the events just perfectly.

Since I can’t exactly ask her to come cook in our kitchen for a week (one, she doesn’t know me; two, she lives in Boston; three, our kitchen is so small!) I decided to just throw caution to the wind and plan an entire week’s meals from La Tartine Gourmande recipes. And so far, we have success! On Monday, we made papillotes with trout and vegetables, which was easier than I thought and tasted divine. Everything just wrapped up to bubble away…open it up and everything is perfectly cooked. (Well, as perfect as I could expect for a first attempt. My mange tout were never going to be snappy from the start…they are not in snappy season just yet. A bit limp, but tasting nice.)

On Tuesday, we had a lovely spring minestrone and something I have nicknamed aubergine castles. I do find it funny that since the Americans say eggplant but the Brits keep the French aubergine, Bea’s English/French recipe titles look all intermingled to me when she cooks aubergine. And I don’t ever find aubergine an easy one to get right. This is probably as right as I have ever managed. I’m not sure I would serve it to company without more rehearsal, but it was quite nice on our warm sunny evening this week.

And last night, we made gingered salmon with carrot sauce and tasting the sauce as I was going, I thought I’d come up with a loser for us—The Boy is not keen on savoury dishes that come up too sweet (evidence already provided!) and the carrot, orange and ginger combination on its own was quite sweet. But I should have known better. When everything was put together…rice, salmon, sauce, peanut and spring onion topping, it was just right and not too sweet after all. Quite a different taste to anything we have ever cooked before, actually. The Boy said this was not a loser at all, though the first meal of the three is still his favourite. (Alas, he was kind and did not mention that I had totally ruined the presentation of this one and therefore no camera was going near it.)

We still have a few more to go in our week of La Tartine. So more notes to come.

Comment [68]

This photo is absolutely rotten by pretty much every standard. And yet I love it. Hurrah for pictures like that. They make me very happy.

It also makes me happy when we finally have a little springtime sunshine. Yesterday was so warm that the entirety of this city had to get outside and make sure it was real. Days like this are not unlike All Summer in a Day, for as I write this it is steadily pouring outside my window. But that is just to make me extra glad that I spent yesterday outside, walking around and finding new places. Why did I not know that there is one street in Soho with about a zillion fabric stores? There is! And apparently it is where costumers for film, theatre and fashion come to do their shopping, as every shop was filled to the brim with people looking for fabric appropriate for gowns for ‘London Hair Fashion Week’, costumes for a new production of La Cage aux Folles at some unnamed location and the elements for making something to be worn by Eva Green. This was the lady ahead of me at the cutting table, who turned to me and asked me to hold a piece of fabric so she could see how it looked with the ‘right colour hair’. So apparently I have Eva Green-coloured hair. Who knew? See, mystery abounds.

Fabric also abounds there and I am so happy to say I now have enough fabric to make all three bridesmaids’ dresses and so far I am still within my budget! It turns out it is useful to visit all of these little aladdin’s caves of fabric, as I found the fabric I wanted at the second shop, but at a price that would have put me over budget on dress one, let alone getting to dress two and dress three. I took a swatch and kept looking. Four shops later I found the same fabric for a fraction of the price, right inside the front door. I am also thinking it’s a good sign when not one but several people ask you on your way to the cutting table if you’re going to need all of what’s on that bolt, as they would like some too. Sadly, they would only have been able to make a minidress with what was left. There is, of course, another bolt down the road for much more! All part of the mystery and discovery.

Today I have discovered a mystery in my home that will make you laugh. We had a visitor from the gas board coming to do annual checks on the boiler and such, and our boiler is in the kitchen. I show him the cupboard and he proceeds to remove a section of wall beneath the cupboard! As in, it just lifts away. An entire section of the tiled wall in our kitchen is attached to absolutely nothing, and merely keeps all the ugliness of a million cords, valves and cables that seem to go to and from the boiler out of sight (and also collects a great deal of dust, seeing as I never knew it was there). Upon seeing him lift the wall away I was astounded that we had such a secret compartment. Why, there could have been people hiding in there and I would have never known! To which the man replied, ‘Well ma’am, they would have to be some very small people.’

I didn’t tell him that I was thinking spiders were more likely and that frankly, I would rather find very small people behind a section of wall than very large spiders. Because I only admit things like that to you, not to people who visit to check on appliances. Obviously.

And I tell you these little everyday interludes because they all lead into the project that is coming up this Friday! Click here to download this month’s Photo Fact Sheet, to get ready for photographing your day this Friday. (There are more details about this project here.) I do hope you’ll join us. And perhaps snap a few photos that are rotten by pretty much every standard, and yet make you very happy indeed.

xlovesx

Comment [14]

Starting this Friday, the 25th of April, our masterplan is to photograph the day in full, then document that day in a scrapbook. And the same on the 25th of May, the 25th of June and so on…for an entire year. By then, we will have captured an entire year of life as we live it, with the changes, celebrations and obstacles that come our way. I would love for you to join us.

Each month there will be two prompts posted here and on UKScrappers—a photo fact sheet and an album prompt. All the materials for this project are free and you can download them at anytime.

Today, you can download a file to help you get ready by building the background pages of your album using papers from your stash. Just click here to download.

The photo fact sheet will be posted here on Wednesday—so spread the word and see you then!

xlovesx

Comment [70]

especially when he cooks.

Comment [22]

album cover created by Gertie

Gertie is zooming ahead with her album cover all ready to go!

More info on Scrap Your Day will be posted here and on UKScrappers on Monday. Everyone is welcome to play along.

In the meantime, I am sorting out some extra kits from recent events, if anyone feels like taking them off my hands. Just a few bits and pieces left to box and weigh up. It’s a pretty gloomy day out there so not such a bad one for a lazy morning and a computerish afternoon. Tonight we’re having dinner with the boss!

I do wonder if she’ll order a banana fritter for dessert.

xlovesx

PS: I’m closing the comments on this because I can’t offer kits for free as I don’t get them for free, and I don’t want anyone to comment here and have their heart broken!! There will be some shopping opportunities soon – we’re just working on making it all tick. Thank you so much for your support and trust me, I do wish I could send supplies to everyone, just for fun!

Comment [24]

You know, it’s all very well to start something but you’d think I’d learn to keep up. Clearly I’ve still got room for improvement there. Since the last diary entry, we’ve still been cooking and taking photos and writing things down but I have been rubbish at putting it in some sort of permanent record here on la internet. Oh well. We can all get over it. And maybe one weekend I’ll find it’s too gloomy to do anything outside and everything indoors is as perfect as can be and on that weekend I will sit down with a hot beverage and transpose notes from the margins of cookbooks and the backs of oil-spotted index cards into electronic diary entires.

And maybe I won’t.

But I can start with these pictures and try to carry on, because the arrival of spring has meant the arrival of daylight and that has made photographing food a far more enjoyable experience.

Spring also means there are things that are starting to appear in stores that haven’t just been kept in a cooler for months on end so we can eat them out of season. Berries are starting to appear! And skinny spring carrots! Only just a little, and mostly from Spain, but okay for a tiny little splurge to kick away winter doldrums. And so we had very many things to stretch our single, beautifully sweet punnet of raspberries: raspberry angelfood cupcakes, raspberries on rice krispies (for I am currently obsessed with berries on rice krispies, no matter how childish that may sound) and this: raspberry almond crumble.

Raspberry Almond Crumble

Ingredients:
Raspberries (fresh or frozen)
Sugar
Chopped almonds
Oats
Plain flour
Unsalted butter
Almond extract
(no amounts listed because really, you won’t need them)

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Start with bowls that are the size you want, the number you want and safe to go in the oven. Fill each half-full with rinsed raspberries. Sprinkle a spoon of sugar over the raspberries in each bowl. Set aside to make the crumble.

In a mixing bowl, start with about half a block of butter if you’re in the UK or one stick of butter if you’re in the US. Roughly 100g, but seriously no need to measure. If the butter is super cold, zap in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it.

Add about two tablespoons of flour, four to six tablespoons of sugar (depending on your sweet tooth!) and one teaspoon of almond extract to the butter and mix or stir. Stir in the chopped almonds, oats and any extra flour needed until it has the consistency you want. I always think it needs to feel more dry than I imagine—if it has too much butter/not enough dry it will be more like pie crust and less like crumble. Not that I don’t like pie crust, but with this I want to taste the raspberries and the custard and let the oats and almond just break up the sweetness. And this is ever so simple to make, so no need to over think.

Cover the raspberries with the crumble and stick in the oven until the raspberries are bubbly and the crumble is just browned. Make custard while the crumble is cooking away. From scratch, I love Bea’s vanilla bean custard recipe. And when I don’t have a full box of eggs in the kitchen to make that, I use the non-instant Bird’s mix with plenty of whole milk and stir in vanilla seeds. Not quite as fabulous but better than serving crumble without custard and hearing no end of it for many, many days.

Comment [8]

They said can you come up with something that will be different?
They said it needs to be something we can finish.
They said and everyone will cheer each other on.

And somehow, I think I said we can do that.

Different as in a little different than a regular cybercrop class. Because we’ll do a little bit before the cybercrop, a little bit during, and a little bit after. Some long, long after. And because you don’t need to participate in the cybercrop at all to join us for this.

Finishable as in I don’t want to feel behind before I start. So we’re going to prep some pages in advance (and they are super quick). Then we’re going to all take pictures on the same day. Then we have a month to stick them into the book before anyone can consider feeling behind.

Cheerable as in we’re going to do this together. As the project progresses, you’ll get tips from lots of people. And every month, we’ll share ways to keep it fun. And you can cheer on your team mates or friends or someone who has just joined UKScrappers for the first time.

Because starting this month, the 25th of every month is Official UKS Scrap Your Day day. On the 25th, we will all snap photos of our everyday. We can share them online and scrap them in an album. And twelve months later, we’ll have documented an entire year of snapshots. Whether you love scrapping the everyday already or wanted to give it a try and weren’t sure where to start, we’d love for you to join us.

One way you can join us is with this kit. It contains one 15×7 spiral bound album by Making Memories and thirteen sheets of 12×6 patterned papers in the designs shown above, by American Crafts, Sassafras Lass and Crate Paper. The 12×6 will make sense when you start to work on this project, I promise. To the kit, you’ll add your own cardstock, photos, journaling and a few of your favourite embellishments like flowers or ribbon to customise your entry each month and keep it looking like your album.

There are a limited number of kits available on a first come, first served basis. Each kit is £10 plus £2 postage and packing. Kits are available to UK addresses and ship by First Class Royal Mail. When you purchase a kit, you’ll also receive a PDF with the instructions for putting the pages of your album together for the project, so you can started before we start snapping away Friday after next.

ETA: All sold out now! Thank you so much! More details to come! If you didn’t get a kit, never fear, as there will be plenty of ideas for using your own stash too.

Any questions, please just ask!

xlovesx

PS: The prompts for this project are free and will be available both here and at UKScrappers, so you are more than welcome to join us even if you are far away. Oh, glorious internet, how we love you!

Comment [16]