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

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.

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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!

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When I left home on Sunday morning, there were thousands of people arriving in our little corner of the world to run the London marathon. I was catching a train in the other direction to get to Alexandra Palace to stamp trees, birds, hedgehogs, polka dots and bunting on tiny pieces of paper all day, which is far more my type of activity. Though we did start to realise that standing still for the same amount of time as it takes to run twenty-six miles is not easy either, but we all made it through and managed to sell a few sets of woodgrain and cakes and woodland creatures along the way. All good fun. And lots of lovely people who said hello! It’s lovely to see a friendly face during the day.

Today I’ve at least had the luxury of sitting down a while…first to pack kits for a little something special from UKScrappers, then for dinner, then to watch Dr Strangelove (The Boy had never seen it and has been strangely obsessed with it lately) and knit a new rug. I collected all sorts of chunky wools when I started knitting, before I learned the important rule that jumpers knit in fat wool look even more fat when you’re wearing them…so I have made many chunky scarves and now I’m thinking the rug is the new answer. The floor doesn’t mind if it looks a bit extra thick around the edges.

The little something special from UKScrappers goes on sale here tomorrow morning at 7am, so do stop by in the morning if you fancy knowing a little more!

And thank you for all the lovely wedding stories…this week has a lot of real stuff happening, and then it will practically be around the corner. My goodness!

xlovesx

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Goodness, I didn’t realise I would be away quite that long. Spring seems to be announcing it is here, despite messing with us (and the cherry blossoms) by giving us short-sleeve weather one day and enough snow to sledge the next. This morning it is ever so sunny, so this bodes well. Every year the winter seems to be a little longer, especially when it’s just cold and dark rather than snowy. Making it through seems like something tiny and feels like something bigger. I don’t mind that I still need a jacket right now—there is light! Also, the sun sets just early enough that you can really enjoy watching everything go pink and orange. Like a big sky of embroidery.

Thank you so much to everyone who made ScrapFever one of the most wonderful experiences ever. Amy, you’re a star and I am so honoured to be asked to teach. Girls, all of you made me remember why I love this so much. It’s been a long time since so many people were so happy about paper and cameras and stories. It felt like the good old days, and yet so many of you were new scrappers. New scrappers…this alone was brilliant. I could gush all day, but I will just say again: thank you.

Lots of lovely spring things are happening. We’ve been getting our flat into order, largely by following this idea called The Cure (and yes, I was quite upset that it didn’t come with a Robert Smith soundtrack specially chosen to help you clean your house of dust and depression…though on second thought, that might be a very difficult mix to create) and as a result there is a lot of in-the-middle going on in our flat, but it’s going in the right direction. So that’s lovely. The Jayhawks won the championship, in the first year I haven’t followed March Madness since I moved away from Kansas. So that’s lovely. And I heard from an old friend who I had lost touch with many years ago, and that was definitely lovely.

Don’t be mistaken into thinking that everything is sane in this loveliness, however. If I also mention that I am in the middle of dresses, shoes, invitations, catering, photographers, flowers and other such things, you will remember that while I’ve been calmly doing other things, I was supposed to be planning my wedding! And in fact, I did a lot of planning and not enough of getting done so…things are getting done now. One by one. All will be ready. All will be fine. All will be lovely.

But today, I better get something done!!!

Please oh please: tell me a little wedding story in the comments. Over the past year I’ve learned most girls really want to talk about their wedding but they don’t because they are being modest and polite and don’t want to indulge on telling these stories. Today I say: indulge! Tell! Lovely little wedding stories, yes pretty please.

xlovesx

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This weekend, you can book a last minute place to ScrapFever! Hurry and just do it. You know you want to! You’re sick of cold, grey winter weather and you want to do something lovely and relaxed and invigorating and good.

Plus the most fabulously wonderful Karen Russell will be there. I am so giddy to meet her.

Plus you’ll be super productive: a minibook, a 20 page 8×8 album, and six 12×12 layouts, just to get started. The kits for this weekend…oh my goodness. You can have a party with all the stuff.

Plus we’d love to see you there.

xlovesx

PS: that’s the lovely jen g with her just a girl album. she makes fabulous things, she does. so you should check her out too.

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Running to catch up with myself this week…the first week of a new class is always chicken-with-my-head-cut-off territory. It felt so wonderful to solve a mysterious technological curveball this morning, so I’m hoping I can find the answers to a few more.

Spent today setting up at Olympia for Stitch & Craft. My fingers are numb from the paper cutting. But all is good…we would love for you to join us for a free make & take or two or three! The show opens tomorrow this morning. I’ll be in the Scrapbook Theatre all day Thursday, Friday and Sunday, so come say hello!

Got giddy because you can buy my stamps now!

Saw REM at the Albert Hall this week. Sigh. REM were my first actual gig. Ever. On the Monster tour at Sandstone in Kansas City. I had saved up for what seemed like forever to buy my ticket (I think it was $30) and then saved more to buy a t-shirt with a big black star on the front. And then at Hyde Park in 2005, rescheduled a week after the 7/7 bombings and all spine-tingly-come-and-get-us-if-you-really-mean-it. And then this week indoors, civilised and grown up and dreamy.

And it’s crazy o’clock in the morning and I need to either work or sleep so I’m going to stop writing this poorly constructed blogpost now.

I promise something more prosaic next time.

xlovesx

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There’s No Place Like Home starts today…and I’ve got a big stack of email addresses on paypal accounts that are bouncing!

If you’ve signed up and can’t access the home class forum, please send me an email. If your paypal email is an account that you don’t check or it doesn’t exist, I can’t reach you.

We are mostly good to go, but I don’t want you to miss out! Many thanks.

ETA: Prompt One is sent now! I’ve got to do a two-to-three-hour drive now, so just know that if you email in the next couple hours, I will get you all set as soon as I am out of the car!

xlovesx

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Greetings to those arriving here from Design for Mankind—it has made my day to be featured there. Such a lovely place to check out if you haven’t already! (And there is a giveaway there today, which is cool too.)

It also made my day to have a nice, tidy kitchen that now has food in it. We are rubbish at food shopping…we mean well and then things get in the way. We are extra rubbish when it is chucking it down with rain, which lately, it is. A great deal. But today we have stocked the fridge and the cupboards and there is life in the kitchen and we have eaten things that do not contain MSG or glow-in-the-dark colour additives. I also get excited when there is juice in the fridge. Right now there is a choice of juices. Many days I could quite happily live on juice and dark chocolate, so juice is a good thing in my world.

As happy as those two things have made me, they may not sound outwardly inspiring, and the other things I have been doing today involve typing, decluttering, paying bills, sneezing, studying for an exam (when I’m not in any type of school! It’s a story for another day.) and finding out the recycling bin is very full only when one’s arms are full of recycling. These things are also not outwardly inspiring. So, here are some things that I do find outwardly inspiring today:
pretty spring colours and lacy cardigans from Emily Temple Cute,
a spring green art journal entry,
this crocheted garland that is just right (but I can’t crochet for toffee) and
this kitchen illustration by Camilla Engman. I quite like the idea of something like that on a photo of our own kitchen to be displayed in our kitchen, even if that is like looking into a kitchen-filled kaledioscope.

Which has just reminded me of the many hours I used to be entertained by finding things I could put in the end of a kaleidoscope my grandpa made. I remember being particularly mesmerized by the pictures made by sequins and dry cat food. Those were days before internet so I am sure Grandpa made it by understanding the entire concept and thereby being able to make it (which is how I see the way my grandfather works at pretty much everything, and if I am wrong, I don’t really want to be corrected) but because these days the internet has all our answers, here is a “set of instructions”.

And this post is just about as coherent as my day has been. How is yours?

xlovesx

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