Hump day hippy van...

Did that title catch your attention?
Our post Ofsted slump is really hitting in.
Our Head of Department had to ply us with kettle chips, jaffa cakes and malteasers in our meeting after school.
There is some sort of big football match on telly so I have been outsted to the scrap room.
Not a bad thing.
I am watching some reruns of Educating Essex.
I must be a glutton for punishment.
So here is an 'out there' layout that I made about the hippy van in Santa Barbara.
I stamped a title, stamped a border, used bottle caps for a title map, layered paper and patterns.

I think it is quite fitting for the subject matter.
The hippy van was awesome and I circulated it for ages to check out all the little details.
The guy who owns it is raking it in as he charges a dollar for a photo and obvs all the tourists want a pic.
Roll on Friday...

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

Legally Blonde, Lola's and other adventures in London!

So along with nail painting, baking cake pops (see previous post) and making a crazy valentines snack bar for the Belgian's return I also procrastinated my pile of marking with a little layout making post London.
My sister and I had a fab time in London and due to the wonder of Instax I could make a layout very quickly with some of our snaps. The pics showcase an Ella's Bakehouse cupcake (overated), Whole Foods Valentines display, Pinkberry delicious and low fat frozen yogurt from Selfridges and last but certainly not least LEGALLY BLONDE: The Musical! It was the highlight of our trip by far and we've both been avidly downloading the soundtrack and listening. My fav songs are So Much Better and Chip on my Shoulder. We checked out online and found if you go to the Savoy at 10am then the first ten customers get front row tickets for £10. What a bargain! The only drawback of the front row was that you sometimes couldn't see their feet and the little doggies (not a big deal as I'm not the biggest animal lover and they always got picked up too!) It was good as you felt part of the action - one of the super camp dancers even winked at me! Plus you can see the orchestra pit as well and so feel like you get a behind the scenes view of the show too!
I wanted this layout to be bright and use sweet, sugar encrusted girly hues. I used Shimelle's latest tutorial of creating bunting with paint swabs and am very pleased with the result. I stamped the title in bright shades so that it would pop and I like doing title in two lines now!

Anyone else seen the show?

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