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

It’s ridiculous o’clock in the morning and I am grading papers. Still.

Somehow I don’t think Monday’s project is happening. How annoying.

I will, however, pass on a link to this which is what you can do with your cupcake tin when you are trying to eat healthy. Or at least act like it. Even the non-veggie boy gave it thumbs up.

Oh My Goodness. Back To Grading Papers. Forever.

xlovesx

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The forecast I read said rain all day, and there hasn’t been any at all. Just lovely open window weather. I am so glad the days are getting longer, at long last.

Today’s project? Get everything ready for next weekend. I am so excited for this workshop. I can’t even explain. Can’t wait, can’t wait. Love 6×6 books, but there’s a whole other concept that I just can’t put into words just yet.

I’m teaching this workshop stateside a few times in the autumn. More details on that in a week or two!

A little housekeeping:

I forgot to put a closing date on this post, so the closing date will be 5pm London time tomorrow (21st of May). Then Melanie will send you goodies!

The book I mentioned was this which I had wanted to read for quite some time but I needed to wait. I needed my own feelings to settle a bit first. I am glad I read it now. It is beautiful. It was my suggestion for book club, but we have another two weeks before our meeting, so I don’t know if everyone liked it or just me.

I haven’t forgotten about the heart layouts. Annoyingly, the playing cards that were supposed to be here ages ago have never arrived. As soon as that is sorted, I’ll update with winners.

Speaking of winners, I am going to the post office tomorrow with a bunch of stuff to mail! Hurrah!

xlovesx

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So Saturday was certainly a project. Or part of a project. But not at all the make something sort of project. A bigger project entirely.

The where-are-we-getting-married project.

Originally, we were I was dead set on somewhere in the city. We looked at some lovely places. Lovely until you realise they have all clued in to how to make money in the wedding industry, so once you find the venue, you discover you can only use their catering, and did we mention it’s £100 a plate for a minimum of 100 guests? Well actually, they don’t mention. They stick it in a folder and hand it to you as you leave, so you sit on the train home understanding why everyone you talk to says they really, really suggest the Vegas concept.

So after a couple weeks back at the drawing board, we had a weekend with some sunshine so we had a little roadtrip to the coast and stopped off in some little villages along the way. We found a definite maybe. And that’s something for a project like this, right?

We also found cake. Everywhere. And this is always a very good thing.

Now we need another weekend to go investigate our other drawing board winner, and we might actually have something in the works. Which is good, because you know I am really just wanting to make save the date cards, of course.

xlovesx

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Thank goodness Friday’s project went so much better than that lovely post o’ yesterday.

This skirt was totally cheating, but I fell in love with the fabric (which looks not dissimilar to my knitting chair!) and decided it would have to be made to work.

Instead of starting from scratch, this is just a reconstruction. What’s a skirt now was a little girl’s dress. As it had an empire waist and a full skirt, there was plenty of fabric from an age ten dress to make a grown-up sized skirt. It was just a case of chopping off the top of the dress (which I will not be surprised to see later this week as an alice band and something flowery, inspired by these, perhaps), hemming the waist and adding a zipper. It even has a little sash that ties in the back.

There’s tons out there on reconstruction, which can be way more involved than cutting the top off a dress, if you want. Try Craftster, Get Crafty or T-Shirt Surgery for a start, though google will bring you much if you want to look for something specific, like t-shirts or skirts.

Oh, hello weekend! I’ve missed you so.

xlovesx

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So here’s the thing:
I don’t really bake from a cook book.

I have my few base recipes that I originally learned from books or cool people who bake, and then I just tweak and alter as I go, and I think that’s way, way more fun. And then when I am happy with a recipe, I scribble it in my little kitchen notebook so I can remember what was in it.

But I also think cook books are fun. I have way more than anyone really needs, but that is okay. They are pretty. And over the last year, I’ve received quite a few cupcake cook books as gifts, and I have thought they were adorable and displayed them in their own little stack on my end table. All of this was good. I would look through them and sigh at the pretty pictures and think about baking. All of this was good.

And then I decided to use a recipe from one of them.

This was not good.

Not at all.

This is what it produced:

Ha! And here I was thinking all printed recipes had been baked so many times that they were bound to be way more reliable than what we find on the internet. No. No, no, no. I tell you, Chockylit is way, way more accurate. And totally free, via the lovely internets.

So Cupcake Thursday became disaster Thursday. My kitchen has never been such a mess after baking. Granted, I have a really tiny kitchen.

My plans for Friday involve something more successful than this inedible sludge that was supposed to be chocolate raspberry cake. See, I knew I should have just used my favourite dark chocolate recipe and added seedless raspberry jam. It may take me a very long time to consider a cook book again.

On the plus side, I have a gorgeously tempting bowl of Chocolate Raspberry Fudge icing in my fridge. That qualifies as a dinner food, right?

Make your Thursday endeavours be more successful! Or at least, enjoy laughing about them!

xlovesx

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I really should be going to work right now but I must share two things:

*Yesterday I finally finished a wonderful book I could have read in one sitting but instead read over three weeks, in bits and pieces. After I finished it, I just sat looking into space. I’m unsure how to continue living my life without a bit of it at the end of the day.

*I put tiny felt hearts on ribbon alice bands because clearly I am not too grown-up for hair baubles. Seriously, I am always the oldest person without children in Claire’s. And I thought I was being grown-up shopping in Accessorize instead, but recently I have noticed the clientele there is still young. They just happen to be teenagers with more pocket money. Oh well. Anyway, the point of this was to laugh that I have spent a good half-hour trying to take a photo of my head with said heart-enduced alice band. I have achieved taking rather interesting shots of the kitchen, the dining room, walls in general…even my shoulder, but not actually the hair band. I hope this is not a sign for the day.

{Clearly later I will just have to get someone else to take the picture!}

Have a lovely day, off-the-wall photos or not!

xlovesx

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Things to make on a rainy Monday evening:

*Toll House Cookies without any chocolate chips. I have always wondered if this would work, like since I was a little girl, but I’d never tried. I didn’t mean to try today, except that I had started making cookies thinking we had chocolate chips. Then when I opened the cupboard, we didn’t. Ever have a day like that? So I decided to play out the childhood experiment. Without any chips or alterations to the recipe they were flat and crispy (although they still tasted nice…they just didn’t look pretty). Turns out if you add a bit more flour and just a bit of oats, they are pretty darn yummy. I do love a bit of experimental baking. It’s more fun with cookies, since you can put in one tray and find out in like 8 minutes if it worked, then add things to the dough to make them better. We made the last tray with cinnamon and they are…um…all gone. Success.

*A bookmark, because I am in total reading mode right now. I could sit here all night and read like ten books in a row. Just me and the rain and a cup of coffee and my giant icelandic blanket to keep away the rest of the world. I did tell you it was a rainy Monday evening, right?

*The patchworked half of another pillow. Hope to finish that one tomorrow!

*A simple little bracelet of beads in pretty colours, all strung together. Just liking the calm of the stringing tonight.

Are you making anything lovely this evening?

xlovesx

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Oh goodness—what a week. Exciting things but I can’t tell yet. Hate that! But after the insanity of it all, some sewing. Oh, the therapy.

Even better, sewing for a cause. Melanie from Fiskars has set us up for some cool goodies. She’s got some of these fab tools to send to a lucky winner.

To win, click on this, this and this, then leave me a comment about your most favourite heart-shaped thing in the world. One lucky commenter will receive the goodies from Melanie!

Or here’s another way to help. This week, I’ll be selling a few pillows on Etsy, and all the proceeds will be donated to AHA and the BHF (half to each). The first one is this pink and green log cabin, and it can be yours here.

Happy Sunday, with extra heart shapes thrown in!

xlovesx

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