Happy Autumn

Its under a month, I repeat under a month until my favourite time of the year will be all over and done with! So before I plunge into deepest tinsledom and emerge in 28 days spitting glitter (not a joke) I thought it was worth looking back on the absolutely beautiful autumn we have had and still seem to be hanging onto! 

 

Most of these photos were taken at my work or on my country lane ‘commute’! Lets not even talk about thankful today (this is England you know!) but, I am truly blessed to work in such a beautiful place.

Treacle Pen Pots

I am currently in the throws of a desk make over so in the spirit I thought I would bling up some treacle and syrup jars that I use to store my pens/brushes/glue sticks and general desk nonsense!

Just some E800 and plastic gems, don’t tell me I have a problem because I already know it!

Pompom Slippers

I needed new slippers but nothing seemed quite fancy enough for me so I purchased this cheap £6 pair and did a little DIY on them. Firstly i hacked off the prissy little bows then made some pompoms.

Pompoms make everything better right?

I know they are absurd but wearing them makes me feel like a premature christmas elf! 

Bejewelled hair slides

I’m not a crazy jewellery hoarder but i do like a little glitter in my hair. Buying shiny trinkets for your hair can get costly super quickly and these took me under 30 mins to do, from rummaging in the drawer to setting them aside. The adhesive then needs to dry overnight but thats ok because you can go on living your day to day life!! 

I used half the gems from 2 packs of 59p ‘The Works’ gems, classy lady I am not. Plus bobby pins and super smelly contact adhesive (that should most certainly be used in a really well ventilated area!) 

I slid two pins over a piece of card with the flat sides facing up then covered that in a line of glue before whacking on the gems and letting them dry overnight. The card stops the pins sticking together and makes it easier to isolate all that messy glue! 

These would make such cute little gifts, you could put them into christmas cards for classmates! 

What was she wearing Wednesday: changing seasons

Its official autumn is coming and the chill in the air signals a real seasonal change. When this time comes crawling around I really resent having to pack away all my cute summer clothes, what a waste! The solution is layering, like this cute summer dress (with detachable peter pan collar) spruced up for the chill with a nautical long sleved top and black tights. Keeping it light and summery with white closed toe sandals and spanking it all up with a primarni bejewelled beetle belt. You KNOW you love the beetles! 

And just to show you how I really feel about taking photos of myself, yes it is painful! Here have a photo of my ‘dog band’ to compensate, enjoy the end of the season. 

Plastic Animal Decorations

I know how soo 2012 pimped plastic animal decorations are but it has taken me a year to find plastic animals within my non existent price range so boo hickey 2012. 

Here they are in their pre makeover state, little cuties! 

Because it had taken so long for me to find them once I had them in my sweaty paws I could not decide what was the best thing to do with them! The internet has so many choices! 

I started by painting them white…

Then decided that was NOT going to work so took to them with my favourite gold paint 

Ahh much better! But a couple of coats later indecision struck again, how to embellish them because everyone knows the personality is in the embellishment!

I split them into two groups of 5, dinosaurs vs big game!

They all got little picture hooks and gold thread loops (so they can hang) and then the super cool big game animals got some black geometric patterns and posed on the piano . . . 

While the crazy party animal dinosaurs (who are still partying like its 66035988 BC) got some glitter glue and teeny tiny gold stars!

 

This is one of those projects that has been going on FOREVER just because i was constantly too lazy to pick up my paintbrushes but now i’m really very glad I got my toosh into gear! 

Walnut Baklava

I have a love of all things Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Hugh says so I jump!

  

This recipe comes from his book three good things and was super easy and totally non time consuming to complete!

Walnut Baklava 

250g Walnuts
50g caster sugar
zest 1 large orange
175g butter (melted)
250g Filo pastry

Filling
150g honey
150g caster sugar
Juice of orange

1. Heat oven to 150C
2. Pulse walnuts, sugar and zest in a food processor to coarse breadcrumb texture.
3.  Begin layering pastry into a 20x30cm tin. Butter the tin and then each layer of pastry as you go. Use half of the pastry and spread with the walnut mixture then continue with the rest of the pastry and butter.
4. Deeply score the top into triangles, diamonds or squares before putting into the oven for around 1 hour or until golden brown and crisp.
5. To make the syrup make the juice of the orange up to 300ml and dissolve the sugar and honey in it before boiling for 10 mins to form a thin syrup.
6. Once the pastry is coked remove from the oven and cover in the hot syrup.

Now the HARDEST part of the whole affair is that it has to cool and steep for 8 hours!!! I did it overnight (to avoid temptation) and treated myself with pastry for breakfast!!! But it is also excellent microwaved for 30s served with ice cream for a desert.