book love...

I am very rarely without a book on the go, in fact I usually have about three or four that I'm reading at any one time...



One of the most brilliant public services, (as far as I'm concerned) are libraries - free books, (unless of course you happen to be like my good self and end up taking the books back late and incurring a fine - though I justify this by thinking at least the money maybe goes towards more books lol!) really it's such a brilliant idea!
This weeks books...





here, here and here...

little pieces of the weekend...

This weekend had more of an Autumn feel to it...

Even breakfast looked like Autumn with the berries and nuts

Dusk from my window - it's getting darker every day now...

A lovely walk where I came across a patch full of weeds that looked so beautiful in the evening sunlight

I think me and Autumn are going to get along just fine...

giving and receiving...

Today was a lovely mail day - the postman, (his name is Ivan) brought me a lovely parcel from Sally, who is one of my flickr contacts. We decided to do a swap which was really fun as I've never done a swap before.

the ones I sent...

the ones I received...

look at the gorgeous packaging and the vintage childrens playing card is so sweet!

I was super excited to get some of Sally's chillies - yay!

This really cheered me up today, there's nothing like lovely snail mail - thank you Sally!

wild and magical...

It's that time of year again when the garden is going wild and everything is taking on a life of it's own.



I have to confess to having a certain fondness for seedheads and greenery, so for the moment, I'm leaving it to it's own devices...

sunflower magic...

More pretty light in my garden this weekend. My sunflower appears to have lots of tiny sunflower buds on it which is strange - I've never seen that before...


Am off to London tomorrow, very very early, (eek!) and back late in the evening but sadly it's for work, so no shopping related opportunities boo hiss!

wednesday...

My two vintage dressmaking patterns have arrived from here and here. (Yes I did finally decide to buy the other pattern I was deliberating over).

such pretty packaging

I'm feeling pretty nervous now though. I've never actually made an item of clothing, especially not one I might actually want to wear...

59:57

It's been a busy weekend, what with one thing and another and included - a swimming lesson, a birthday,(my neice is 15yrs old - yikes!)and yesterday I ran a 10k race - woo hoo in 59:57! I was pretty happy as it was only on July 12th that I ran my first 5k race and I totally couldn't imagine doing the distance twice and yet yesterday as I pounded the pavements, I even kind of enjoyed it...



The funny thing is, I never even enjoyed running before, it's just crept up on me but I like that I can still manage to surprise myself sometimes!

biscuits...

What to do when you fancy a biscuit but the tin is empty? Mmmmm, how about knocking up a batch of choc chip cookies? It's so long since I've made biscuits that I'd forgotten how crazily easy they are to make.

I used this recipe and the best bit, is that they only take 8 minutes to bake - yum!












In fact making them is quicker than going to the shop and wrapped in baking parchment they travel well, (and look cute!). Just the thing when the weather is rainy and cold outside and you want something sweet!

such pretty light...

It's still around for the moment, so I'm going to enjoy every drop of it while it lasts...

windowsill light

sweet peas

evening sunlight in my sitting room

dusk

this week...

Has been all about chilling, after my previous hectic week and lack of sleep! I think now that summer is coming to an end I'm starting to think more about making and looking for inspiration while the sun is still around.

Thinking of pretty things leads me to good news. The lovely Rachel from Heart of Light has opened an Etsy shop, yep you heard right and about time too! She has so many beautiful handmade headbands for sale and oh so pretty...

Heart Of Light on Etsy

Heart of Light on Etsy

If you're quick enough, this lovely may still be available because who doesn't need a ruffley headband! Oh and she can also make all the headbands into belt sizes as well...

Recently I've been thinking that I'd like to try and make my own clothing, so this week I've bought a vintage clothing pattern from 13th Faerie on Etsy. There are so many lovely vintage patterns on Etsy that they're worth looking at just for the illustrations.



I figured I'd better try and start off simple, as my knowledge of dress making is pretty non existant and it was the words 'Simple to Sew' that sold me! I'm thinking I might make this shorter than the pattern suggests and maybe lower the neck line a little. Ho hum, perhaps I should actually wait and see how complicated this looks before I start making my own adjustments lol!

I also really want the pattern below, from here



but it's about three sizes bigger than I need. Apparently it's easy to resize patterns - mmmmm but I'm not convinced, especially for a novice like myself. Any thoughts anyone?

where do all the days go...

I'm still trying to catch up with myself this week, as I've been pretty busy...

Another bar-b-q with some friends, on a sunny Wednesday...





Dancing 'till dawn, (5.15am to be precise!) into the early hours of Friday...



A trip to the climbing wall on Saturday, (I took the photos, there was no way I was fit to climb lol!)

Shopping for presents for a 60th birthday. Then the party last night for my Aunt with family and friends...



Trust me, this weekend is going to be all about taking it easy...

in a nutshell...

Some things from the weekend...

a run

some crafting



a little sunshine



and some lazing



a bbq



and a homemade plum frangipane tart



recipe to follow



I would have posted this yesterday but we had a power cut yesterday evening for about 3 hours just as I was thinking of going online - grrrr! :)

polaroid love...

Following on from my last post,I forgot to say that when I was in Belgium we went to a flea market, which was fantastic.



I managed to pick up a sonar 5000 polaroid camera for 7 Euros which I was very happy about. It's pretty well loved, (for that read scratched lol!) and I don't actually know if the camera works and finding sx 70 film is proving a little tricky, as they stopped making it in 2006. I have found one place where I can get a film for £18.50 for 8 exposures - eek! I have to say I was actually considering this as a treat but the postage is £14 - yikes and it's only coming from Europe - so £32.50 for 8 exposures and I don't even know if my camera works - mmmm - I'm still pondering...

Still, there is hope in the form of the Impossible Project. A group of former workers are on a quest to produce film that can be used in vintage polaroids. They have exactly a year which ends at the end of 2009 and have signed a lease on the old polaroid factory for 10 years. The problem is that some of the components used in the film are no longer available so they are seeking experts with information The site gives a contdown and at this point in time there are 13,240,759 seconds to go...

So until then, this is the next best thing for now. I found this site called Poladroid which you can download and use to transform your photos into a polaroid style. It's cute and fun for playing around and best of all it's free!





Enjoy your weekend!

life on film...

Having been inspired by the fact that the lovely Catherine and also Martina have recently bought cameras to shoot film, before I went to Belgium I was checking out Etsy and ebay to see if I could pick up something to play with. We do have an Olympus camera but it's in need of repair and hasn't been used for years.

Then I remembered that M has a camera that belonged to his father, an Agfa Silette L.


- Yay, I'd totally forgotten about this and I think it's in working order, so now I'm back I've bought some film and need to start playing!!



Not sure how I'm going to reign myself in as I'm used to taking 100's of photos not just 36! Let the love begin...

hello again...

So here I am, back from the land of chocolates. We had a great time, though it passed too quickly. In truth I didn't indulge too much, though it would have been so easy as there are so many yummy looking things to eat!


I did actually eat this cake!


After being in Belgium I feel inspired to start baking delicious looking cakes...



The weather was gorgeous, the hotel fantastic and we managed to do some touristy things like eating Belgium waffles and visiting the Grand Place. So all in all a lovely trip!

So here I am back home again and before I forget, I said I would pick a comment from this post to do a little giveaway of the Zine from Sprouthead and some other bits and pieces. So without further ado the name I picked, (using a very scientific method of giving you all a number!) was number 8 which is the lovely Catherine. {Catherine if you email me your address I'll make sure a little package wings its way to you...}

fifty posts and some freebies...

Yay! today is my 50th post - so I decided to cheer you up with some freebies of sorts. Thanks to Ali from Domesticali I got this cute little box through the post from Graze full of yummy goodies to, well... graze on, free of charge, (yep you heard me correct...free of charge Woo Hoo!. The bad part is that you have to be in UK to qualify, {sorry all})



I want to share the foodie love and so if you use this code 8G1N2T6 and go to graze.com then you too can get a free box of nibbles through the post and there's not even any postage! My box came with chilli almonds, black pepper cashews, a dried fruit mix called apple strudel, (which was to die for - who knew dried fruit was this delicious) and 'rock the casbah' - a nut, seed a fruit mix -yum! There are about 130 choices of nibbles and you can either choose your own or pick a nutrition pack, (mine was a post workout pack). Also if any of you do take up this offer then the kind peeps at Graze give me a discount off my next box! (double yum!)

My other freebie is really thanks to the postal service. I ordered this lovely little zine from Sprouthead from Etsy and thanks to a postal hitch, she was worried I wouldn't receive it, so sent another out.

{Such lovely drawings and the poem is sweet}

She very generously said that if both turned up I could keep them. Amazingly they did both turn up and so I emailed and said that as they were so lovely I thought someone else should benefit from her work and that I would do a giveaway on my blog. So...leave a comment, no matter how random on this post and I'll pick a name on Friday (31st) and send you the zine, (I'll also put in some other random goodies). Enjoy your weekend - I am probably sampling Belgiums finest chocolates at the moment! ;)