Valentine Cake Pops: The Mystery Unravelled

Recently these cuties have been popping up all over blogland. I was inspired by Elsie's how to over on her blog and always love to check out what Bakerella create. My husband has been away all week and so we missed out on celebrating valentines and I have been missing him lots. Last night on the phone I asked what he wanted for our reunion meal and he said a snack board with loads of little snacks. I immeadiately started pinning lots of little sweet and savory treats - check it out here.
He's never been the biggest cupcake fan (annoyingly) but always raved about my sister's cake pops and so I decided to try to make some. I wanted to use up some stuff i had left over from my wedding baking sesh last week. Here is a step by step of my improvised recipe:
1) I combined ten peanut butter chip cookies and half a tub of philadelphia in the mixer.
2) I icing sugared my hands and rolled it into balls and placed cling film on a dish and then put them in the freezer.
3) I melted dark chocolate over boiling water and then put some chocolate on a lolly stick (they sell them at Asda now - yay!) and then you squash it in and dunk the pop, being careful to cover it all - I used a teaspoon and a spatula for this.
4) I dunked them in a variety of sprinkles and then let them set in a vase filled with lentils. I didn't have any foam.
5) After an hour or so I transferred them to the fridge where they are waiting to be gobbled up tomorrow.
I have a whole valentines dessert bar to share with you tomorrow - I am super excited. It is helping to distract me from the loneliness and all this darn marking I have to do.

Let me know if you have had any cake pop success!
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Linking up with Inside BruCrew Life Trick or Treat Tuesday

London town...baby!

So although yesterday my valentine was a whole ocean away he still left me a pretty cute card in my bag to find. But I am a having an amazing time in London town with my sis. I will share some pics of our indulgence very soon but till then I have this layout of our last mini trip in October last year. It was when we had freakish sunshine.
In the meantime here is a snapshot of my New Years 2012...

Even though we just had a little family gathering we still got all dressed up - including snazzy tights and funky nails. We also have fireworks now as it's our new fusion of traditions - all families have big fireworks displays on New Years Eve in Luxembourg and so we have started having our own show too. I ordered these pics off snapfish with a white border and then it makes a really simple and striking layout with minimum fuss and effort!

Storytelling Sunday: The One with A Bake-a-Date!

So being a Latter Day Saint means there is a strong dating culture as they always want to get everyone married off nice and young. So when I moved to Leeds one of the activities they used to put on at Valentines was bake-a-date. Single guys and gals had to bake a cake anonymously and then the girls cakes would go first and guys would have to bid on them and then whatever they bid for the cake they had to take the girl for a date costing that much. They also got to eat the cake.

Things would get crazy out of hand and some 'cakes' went for as much as £80. Inevitably some fixing would go on and if you already liked someone you'd find out from their friends what they baked etc. As a rule guys would try to go for the less impressive cakes as they felt attractive girls wouldn't have time to bake (little did they know! I wasn't a baker in those days and just brought a co-op chocolate fudge one as pictured above!!)

So the funny experience was that this quite geeky guy (who from now I shall refer to as The Geek) brought my cake and so I wasn't that impressed. It wasn't the guy (who I will now call The Player) I was hoping and in the week leading up the dreaded date with The Geek, The Player who I liked asked me out. Eeek! So we started 'seeing' each other and I still had to go on the dreaded date.
The Geek took me to the theatre (score) and even brought me some chocolates and a rose (score) I wasn't such a nice person back then and kept escaping to text The Player (who of course was an idiot and not the one and he would NEVER have brought me chocolates or a rose!)  I even met up with The Player afterwards and we scoffed the chocolates from The Geek. 

A week later The Geek saw me out with The Player and he didn't seem very impressed (understandably so).

But a year later I baked again (I had seen the light and ended it with the player) and I had my eye on a very tasty Belgian and he also had his eye on me. My girls tried to help out by informing him none too subtley, but they were a bit trigger happy and so he ended up having quite an awkward date with another girl and a week later we had our first official date at the cinema. We even got told off halfway through for talking too much. Now we're the couple that tuts at people like that - I mean why go and see a film just to talk the whole way through!?

So it all worked out in the end!

January in numbers...

So January has scarily flown by and it's been a busy month with lots of difficult decision making to be made!

Number of sales bargains: 5 including this vintage jumper below (love it!) Excuse the moody pic!

 Number of layouts completed: 18 (it's been a booster month! A lot of them have just been completed and were started ages ago!)

 Hen do's attended and afternoon tea consummed: 1. A week after attending this cute tearoom is Ilkley I took my hubby to try the delicious homemade scones and sandwiches and the lady told us it would take 20 mins, which we didn't mind as we were chilling out anyways and having a lazy Saturday. But it was twenty minutes (at least) until the guy took our order and he went to ask her if she 'minded' making another afternoon tea as she seemed to be a bit stressed out with her six tables! He came back and said she 'didn't want' to make another one. How ridiculous is this? We found it hilarious how unprofessional they were! So we left...

Here is the hen enjoying her tea!

January has also marked the start of Thursday night pub quiz night. First week we lost of the tie breaker, second week we didn't fare so well and last week we WON! Woo hoo! Ten is the amount of drinks vouchers we won!

Since that's all I can really share for now (more on that another month) 

I will leave it there...

How was your Janaury?

Still Documenting 2011...

So January has been a big catch up month and here I share my very blue, very exciting month of August.

 The month was 'awesome' as you Californians say. It included self timer fun along the Big Sur, rides on Santa Cruz Boardwalk, human pyramids on Long Beach, San Diego Zoo and San Fran in the mist.
What I love about scrapbooking is that on this cold and rainy Friday night I can relive the magic of that holiday in the sunshine!
It really was the trip of a lifetime!

October Document 2011...

So...ever playing catch-up it may look like I rushed these...but I wanted the emphasis to be on the colourful pics and I had so many exciting ones from October as it was a busy month with my birthday, a trip to London in half term and a Halloween party.
I don't know if I'll keep this project up for 2012 but it was good while it lasted..actually it's not over yet!

Scandinavian Saturday: The one with a scary detour...

Well I've been plugging away at my scrapping resolutions and believe this here layout meets resolution 4 Scandinavian style and number 8 border boost.
I saw the Scandinavian Style in the latest scrapbook magazine (the name eludes me now!) and decided I liked the natural colours mixed with red and black and the 'white space.' I have a fair few Martha Stewart border punches and so I wanted to have some fun with these too.

Now onto the story...
My regular followers will know that we had an epic road trip holiday in California in the summer. We flew into LA and then drove up to a wedding north of San Fran. On the way I had noticed in the guidebook a John Steinbeck museum - now I have been teaching Of Mice and Men for six years and can practically recite the novel off by heart, so I was very keen to see his hometown and also the artifacts about him. I also wanted to create a slide show for my surly Year 11's to try to interest them in the subject - always a battle with teens! But pics do seem to help!
So we stopped off. After the salubrious areas of Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Salinas was a real 'culture shock.' Literally you could imagine the tumble weed - it was eerily quiet and people looked at you funny and everything just looked a little worse for wear.
Our hotel was straight out of a Hitchcock film and had a really scary list of safety notices on the door, featuring some gems like:

• Don't answer the door to anyone claiming to be room service
• Phone reception immediately if you hear any suspicious noises

I wish I had taken a picture but my travel companions were not finding the whole experience amusing. In fact my husband tried to push the chest of drawers in front of the door to barricade us in. The windows and the door were pretty drafty and so we were on red alert all night as any scuffle or noise! But clearly we lived to tell the tale and I felt it was worth it as the museum was informative, well laid out and really helped me to imagine the context of his literature.
I like the simplicity of this layout and am glad I challenged myself to try something a bit different. Has anyone else tried or heard of Scandinavian style scrapping? And no it doesn't involve a flat pack or meatballs...

Fun with my new fiskars...

Picture the scene:
A cold, windy,  miserable winter evening.
Bored, so you're trawling fb looking for some goss.
And a certain Shimelle post alerts me to some fiskars punches ending soon.
So I get involved in a bidding war..
And come out triumphant.
Now I am having fun creating layouts with my new toys.
I admit I had to youtube how to use it.
But now I am a pro.
Sort of.
I wish it didn't make holes in the shapes it punches out so you could use them too.
Here's what I made:

This is a thrifty layout and here is how to copy it:-

1) I used a leftover kraft envelope and just cut five squares out of it.

2) Then I backed each square in map cardstock and even some leftover Christmas wrapping paper.

3) I matted the middle pic and then doodled a border on the other two pics.

4)I used letter stickers for the title.

5) I stapled on some ribbon (also left over from Christmas)

6) I used a border sticker

7) I stepped back and admired it!

So have a go - get out that square cutter.

I will count this as my recycled layout and I also designed a sketch for it before hand.
I love that I am meeting my scrapping resolutions cos I certainly ain't meeting my healthy eating ones!

Making whoopee...

Ever since I got the gorgeous new Hummingbird Bakery cook book I have been drooling over the whoopee pies and tried the Banoffe Pie ones here and so next up was the chocolate and peanut butter ones. I wanted to use my tasty new speculoos I got in Belgium - I even got a jar of it for one of my sixth form students who fell in love with it when I made my speculoos blondies here.
You can find the recipe for these babies here, I substituted peanut butter for Lotus Speculoos (available in Belgium and I think an equivalent is called Biscoff in America and Australia?) 

Top tip: Actually follow the instructions and put the batter in the fridge for a good hour - it made it sooo much easier to mould perfect rounds with as it was the texture of cookies rather than a cake batter.
My sixth form also got to sample these as an impromtu treat for winning a quiz as otherwise i would have scoffed the lot myself!
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Linking up with BruCrew Life's trick or treat Tuesday

Things I'm loving 2012!

Hi there...
Here are a few things I am loving so far this year.
1) Hands down the BEST cupcakes I have ever baked and tasted. An explosion of blueberry and lemon - really moist and topped off with a delish cream cheese frosting. I am making them for my friends wedding in feb and she raved about them on the trial. I will post about them next month with pics and ideas for decorating them - think glitter and butterflies!

Recipe here

 2) I got my nails done for my works do and then went and brought myself my own black opi shatter and recreated the look for New Years Eve. I love this stuff! It's so easy too!

 3) My nod to a healthier new me in 2012 has been these bad boys. They are so delish and help up my fruit intake - the new one has acai berry and that is a superfood - more of that please!!

4) I am a little bit addicted to The Big Bang Theory and think all of the characters are so clever and hilarious, I have a few friends they remind me of and this makes it even funnier. It's very clever and Sheldon just cracks me up! Do you watch it too?

 5) Being reunited with this man...he was away on a residential this week and at first I was really looking forward to it, but I did get quite lonely at night. I caught up with some of my girlie friends which was great, but I was *really* pleased to see him Friday afternoon!

What are you loving for 2012?
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Linking up with Paisley Jade

May Document 2011...

Whilst the computer cable is still on the way...I found this fuzzy layout which I hadn't blogged yet. I am only up to August and this is the May 2011 layout, which has been completed for a while but I have been waiting for a photo delivery.
May was the month of family reunions, my mom's birthday, joining the gym and a meal at the steak house.

Now January has so far been the month of finishing off Christmas treats (not diets), lots of web surfing, some exciting scrapbooking, crap telly (like Don't Tell the Bride) and lots of marking and school work already!
Groan!

Spot the difference...

The first three of my challenges are completed already, the only problem is...I left my camera cable in Brugges so have no way of getting them from the camera onto the laptop! I will share them soon though.
In the meantime a scraplift finished about a month ago. I was drooling over 'Miss Smith's' New Years layout (see below) and decided it would make a perfect design for one of our holiday pics. We met up with Arne's dad's piloting friends when we were in San Luis Obispo and had a great lunch with him on the coast.
I love. love, love the vibrant colours and the bunting - which I made myself.

Her original post is here.
Hope that you all have a creative weekend. We are off to Tampopo in Leeds tomorrow as they are doing a 40% off deal on their website - I love all these January sales!
xox

Scrapbooking resolutions...

I decided to get 2012 off with a bang I would make 10 Scrapbooking Resolutions to challenge myself in my crafting. I planned them in the car driving back from New Years at my parents.
So here they are - I hope that you will join in too!

1) Button-it-up 

2) Instax envelopes

3) Embossing

4) Scandanavian style

5) Chipboard chic

6) Design and use my own sketch

7) Clashing colours

8) Border boost

9) Recycled layout

10) Vocational scrapping

I am setting myself the month of January to complete this challenge.
What challenges are you setting yourself for the New Year?

TOP THREE OF 2011...

So for the first time this year I am ill. It started day after boxing day and I just thought that I was sea sick as we were on the ferry, but now I'm bunged up and having a duvet day so thought I'd do a 2011 roundup - as is popular in blogland!

Top three layouts I made...

1) Santa Cruz in the sunshine - I love the colour, the paint splatters, the mosaic effect and the memories of a great day out.

2) Baby You're a Firework - great memories of a cracking New Year spent with my family. Great pics with some cool camera effects with the sparklers, bunting was very on trend for 2011 and I like the mix of colours and papers.

3) If the dress fits - my wedding layouts are always going to be favs of mine and this one was extra special as I was craving this overlay for a whole year or so till I found it in Santa Monica. Love the pink and the small little details.

Most popular posts...

1) The one about the zulus (I think this has more to do with people googling zulus than my amazing pics but oh well!)

2) Comic relief with my Where's Wally costume and a wedding layout

3) Frost Yourself - about lovely cupcakes at the Iron Cupcake contest and some Christmas scrapping

Fav scrapping techniques of 2011...

1) Bunting and banners - using number 2 mostly. Can be seen here, here and here.

2) Bakers twine - wrapped round everything!

3) Instax pics - see this post!

Best recipes tried from Pinterest...

1) Life changing mac 'n' cheese - we have made this sooo many times as a last minute supper and its always well recieved. I just love it!

2) Aubergine Parmigana - we love this meal and also have it often. Its so garlicy, cheesy and good!

3) Butternut squash macaroni - are you seeing a pattern emerge? Now butternut squash takes some chopping but its so worth it for this dish!

Best three cupcakes I made...

1) Gimme smore - my personal favs, these were seriously delish!

2) Star crossed lovers - these were placed second in IC. Malteaser cakes and malt frosting.

3) Last but not least - a real fail safe - peanut butter frosting and chocolate sponge. 

Thanks to all my amazing followers - especially those who leave me lots of blog love (Gems, Tamara, Louise and Julie) Happy 2011! Hope you all have a safe and fun evening tonight!
I am thinking what turn to take for 2012 and my blog.
Do you want to see more scrapping? Some tutorials? Thrifting and thrifty tips for crafts and fashion? Baking? Cupcakes? Let me know...
I am considering a project a day but don't know if this is too much of an undertaking?!

Love and hugs and border punches,

Mel xxx

Having ourselves a merry little Christmas!

In Brugges...

How did you spend yours?