Valentines Snack Bar: Mini Me!

Above is the sight which met my husband when he got back from his week in Belgium. I got lots of ideas from pinterest and had a lot of fun decorating the table fancy for him.

I included some layouts of the two of us to decorate the wall behind and chopped up some nice fresh veg to dip in the hummous.

Above are greek salad bites with feta cheese, black olives, cucumber and a cherry tomatoe - they were very tasty and very easy to make. Although not always to stand up! Do you notice the chocolate dipped pringles in the background? A super tasty and indulgent snack and a good way to use up the leftover chocolate from the cake pops.

 Our fav parmesan and olive bread above, recipe found here it is so easy to make and I even prettied the butter up by cutting it with a heart cutter. Below the cake pops that I have already posted about:-

 This candle, table runner and napkins were all 50% off at Asda - it's always good to celebrate a holiday after the event if you want some bargains! I filled heart patterned cupcake cases with little heart shaped chocolates and jelly sweets.

Click on the picture for a better look - I spent ages putting labels on this pic with photoshop but it says that the file is too large. Its annoying!

Blueberries and cherries in little finger bowls, malteasers in a pot decorated with a bow, I covered as box in wrapping paper to try to jazz up the table and add dimension.
 So let me know - have you ever made a dessert bar? Or themed snack bar as mine is!
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Linking up to BruCrew Life and Sumo's Sweet Stuf, Crazy for Crust and Six Sisters' Stuff

Halloween Party - cupcakes and game ideas!

I planned a halloween party for church last night and have a few ideas and recipes to share with you.
Firstly our impromtu costumes:

 The scrubs we had borrowed from our dentist friend - they are very comfy for lounging round the house in. We googled how to make fake blood and the answer is soy sauce (we only had Lea and Perrins but it seemed to work just as well) and red food colouring. It didn't smell so hot, but it looked very genuine.

I made these cupcakes using toppers I got from ebay. I used the hummingbird chocolate cupcake recipe:

Chocolate cupcakes (recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery)

Ingredients

100g plain flour

20g cocoa powder

140g caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

40g soft unsalted butter

120ml whole milk

1 egg

1/4 tsp vanilla extract (although I probably used 3/4 tsp - slip of the hand!)

Chocolate frosting

3000g icing sugar, sifted

100g unsalted butter, very soft

30g cocoa powder sifted

45ml whole milk

Method
1) Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2) Put the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and butter in a large bowl and beat on a slow speed with an electric hand mixer until well combined and a sandy consistency. This is the messy part as the sugar flew all over the place!

3) Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla extract together in a jug and add half to the dry mixture.

4) Beat slowly to combine and then more quickly to beat out any lumps.
5) Add the remaining liquid mixture and beat slowly to combine. Do not overmix.
6) Transfer (I found semi-pouring/semi-spooning the best way to go as the mixture is quite slack) the mixture into the cake cases until 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven until they spring back to the touch. A skewer inserted should come out clean.
7) Remove from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack before frosting.

I used the perfect never fails me ever, vanilla frosting:

2 cups icing sugar

1 cup unsalted butter 

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste 

1 tablespoon milk

(Makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes)

I added a few drops of green food colouring to make it more goolish. I also added a sprinkle of edible, gold glitter.

These babies below were pumpkin with cream cheese frosting. Excuse the pictures I was in a rush and had so much to organise and sort out before the party.

Here are some halloween games if you are planning a little party:

1) Pumpkin bowling was easy to organise and very cheap. We emptied six bottles of cheap lemonade (which we turned into witches brew with a little help from blackcurrant squash) and filled them with a handful of marbles. Then they had to bowl them over using a pumkin, it worked very successfully until one of the lads threw the pumkin too hard and it split and pumpkin guts spilt everywhere!

2) Another popular game around blogworld seems to be pin the heart on the skeleton. I painstakingly cut out each bone and laminated them and then we didn't even play it as there was so much going on and I'd lost the blue tac! The skeleton game pattern in available here.

 3) We also played a game where they had to transfer a bowl full of gummy worms from one side of the hall to the other, using chopsticks. We started it with one at a time but then I said they could do two at a time. This was a good laugh.

Let me know if you had a halloween party or link up your halloween costume ideas!

Happy halloween (for tomorrow!!)

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Linked up to fingerprints on the fridge and 504 main

10 favourite presents...

As a weekend filled with cake, shakes and pressies draws to a close I felt it a good time to share with you all my ten favourite birthday pressies (in no particular order!)...

1) So comfy pj's from my mom - with apples on and everything

2) A recipe book with one batter and 100 different variations for pancakes and waffles

The cupcake adorned water bottle in the middle to keep me hydrated at school from a fellow teacher

A fisheye lens for my SLR from the boy

Perfume from my mom I was very put off by the naff name - Womanality, but it actually smells lush

Flowers from my friend Sally

Some crafty goodness from little sis

How cute are these shimmer eyeshadows? Thanks mom!

I'm dotty about these! Wore them to work on Friday and got lots of compliments!

With this gorgeous book I plan to make some of these....

Red velvet whoopie pies

So there you have it, are you 'well jell'? I am linking this up to Shimelle's ten on the tenth. Come and join in!

My birthday week...

So I have been super busy celebrating my birthday over three seperate nights. The boy really spoilt me and even organised a (not so surprise) surprise party.
So the week looked like this -

• A one year old's birthday party
• A girly night at the Cheerful Chilli in Otley (my fav place to eat)
• A romantic birthday meal at the Prashad (my new fav place to eat) it was even featured on Gordon Ramsey's best restaurants
• A surprise milkshake party (check out the cool cups below) we tried some pretty cool combos. My fav is nutella and peanut butter - like a Reese's peanut butter cup.

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This is my fav picture from the week:

I got a new fish eye lens for my slr but we are having some problems using it, I need to have another play I think.
Some layouts will be coming later, they are photographed just need to blog it.

It was a nice day for a white wedding...

Doesn't the bride look stunning? Below are the teaching trio! Do you like my new dress? Above are some snaps of the gorgeous wedding I attended yesterday. The weather was so perfect for them and it was just a fab day with loads of cute little touches. I will post more pics later. Many more exciting posts to follow, especially since I found some retro scrapbooks whilst clearing out my parents attic. They helped to remind me why I do all this, as I experienced such genuine joy and pleasure at looking through them and remembering the events recorded and reading how I felt and what I was like at 14. Plan to do some scrapping tomorrow too as the weather is turning and I won't feel so guilty about being holed up inside. Hope all my English readers had a fab bank holiday. Thanks for your support and comments.

It's all Greek to me...

Come Dine with Me part 2 took place on Friday night...it was another real feast. I wore my maxi dress as it is roomy and stretchy and more roomy than jeans - lol! We had mousakka, stuffed vine leaves, plenty of hummous and pita, butter bean goulash and a delicious chocolate and cherry cake for dessert...

As you can see everyone enjoyed tucking in. We were drawn as the next hosts and are thinking of a gastro pub theme as we were discussing that Britain didn't really have a strong, culinary rep so we will try to right that and are looking forward to the challenge. Any recipes or ideas please comment...

Stranded...

So it took eleven hours to travel from Leeds to Oxford and a large part of that journey was stationary. The worst part was at 11.30 we were ten miles from our final destination - my granny's 90th birthday - and we only got there at 7pm. Ridiculous right?? So clearly I spent most of my weekend in a car and don't have any scrapping to show but I am taking part in the Favourite Things challenge and have been scanning my blog looking for me fav page of the year. Here it is: Reasons why it is my fav: * The pics were taken on a fab getaway to Liverpool and have great memories attached to them * 2010 has been all about the glimmer misting for me. * These were the first paper flowers i ever made and I am very proud of them. * It all fits together well and has been on our wall all year. What are your favourite layouts of this year and why?

All geeked out...

So the geek party was a great success. We kept track of who the biggest geek of the evening was with our chart giving points for different activities like Articulate, Geek Quiz and bomber man tournament. We gave our guests geeky alter ego names and had a prize for the best geeky costume.

The game of the night...bomberman. Do you remember how great this game is? And addictive?

Lord and Lady of the Geek Manor! Lovin' the plaster on the glasses.

Our table of geeky treats.

A geeky first kiss...

And last but not least (for the party pics) the hosts - Melly and Arnold.

And whilst I am in the middle of a mega post I thought I would include this Shimelle inspired layout I completed of our Christmas Krispy Kremes.

Lots of border stickers, ribbons and stamping.

So there you go...what did you all get up to this festive weekend?

A snowy quest for geekiness...

Well I am now on snow day number three and ashamed by my lack of scrapping. :0 Actually I have done some scrapping but it's for my DT so check back here on the 10th for our Ho ho hop there will be loads of chances to win prizes. I had forgotten all about my little photo printer and *thought* it was broken, but clearly not so I printed off one of the pics from this weekend and got going straight away. I was inspired by the dvd cover of Love Actually and wanted my title to be something like - my family actually love London...but it didn't work out that way and so I went for this instead. Using up some of the dregs of my AC kit. Off to Harrogate later but will have to restrain myself inm TKMaxx. The backing paper reminded me of the underground and I studded it with loads of mini brads. I used this weeks sketch from Twisted Sketches and the ribbon is my take on a frame. Wanted to snap it in the snow, so here you go... I don't know why I look so glum in the snow... Tonight is Arne's belated birthday and so I made these pacman and mario inspired cookies. I used lemon juice instead of water for the icing so they are a sweet and sour treat. The party theme is: geek!

Here is the pic and mix pot for the occassion...

Are these drinks geeky enough?

I am planning to play guess the celeb geek picture round, Articulate, table fusball tournament and a quiz to get what percentage of a geek you are. Any other ideas for geeky games??