Dark and White Glitter Chocolate Truffles

I got this recipe from the wonderful ladies over at A Beautiful Mess blog, adapted it a bit, and now I'm ready for christmas, albeit in a bit of a chocolate coma.

 

 

(I had to make sure they were ok!)

 

All packaged and ready to go!

InstaXmas

 

My chalkboard advent calender, I was trying to be good but then someone bought me a chocolate one..oh well!

 

My homemade wreath, made from ivy, bits of chirstmas tree, a wire coat hanger and a couple of pieces of lavender...so simple.

 

Awesome wrapping paper from paper chase.

 

Christmas sparkles!

 

Winter sky.

 

Cheese, tea and more cheese...I had some VERY strange dreams last night after our little (ahem) cheese binge!

Chair-Lift

Like a face lift..but for a chair.

 

When we moved into our home 2 years ago, we decided EVERYTHING should be red. I'm not really sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

I'm slowly but surely de-redding everything, and this brings me to my latest little diy project - a 'dip-dyed' chair. I've seen some beautiful images of chairs with dipped legs on the bible that is pinterest so I thought I'd give it a go.



 

 

I just measured the same distance up each leg, popped on some masking tape and got the paints out!

 

 

Blackboard Post

I had to share this one, it made me smile...Roald Dahl - what a hero!



C'est Fini!!!

Leading on from my previous post - we've finished the house!

And this is what it looks like now....

My bike has become rather redundant because we live up a MASSIVE hill...but I thought the mint looked very nice in its new home.

We've gone minimal in the bedroom, and have used old fruit crates as bedside tables.

I've spent a lot of time in here!

I have to thank Pinterest for my inspiration for this one! This was the most fun part of all of our decorating, theres something satisfying about painting black after weeks of painting everything white.



Nail Art.

I've never really been one to get a manicure, or be particularly bothered about my (or anybody else's for that matter) nails.

That was until I discovered Pinterest. Uh-oh!

There are so many amazing ideas! I had to give it a go. So here are two of my attempts (I do apologise as these are no way up to the standard of some of the posts I've seen!)

1.Ultra Violet tips on Grey

2. Parma Violet and Mint

These are some of my favourite that I found via Pinterest.

(bodycare.becomegorgeous.com)

As see on Zooey Deschanel

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If you have any favourites leave a comment here, I would love to see them!!

Homemade Pizza.

This was my first attempt at making dough, and it worked!

Watching it rise was so exciting (how sad am I!!??) I just assumed it probably wouldn't work.

You can get the recipe I used for the pizza base here.

It tasted yummy...I'm in a bit of a carb coma now though!

Peter Pan Collar Pillowcase Top.

Here's a little something I made the other day,

The other day while obsessing over browsing through Pinterest and decided I needed a top with a Peter Pan collar...so here's what I came up with:



Knickers Tutorial.

Here is how I made the knickers I posted yesterday. Please be aware that my sewing skills are totally self taught, therefore if I'm doing something in a seemingly odd way, that is why, and please feel free to let me know how to do it properly!

You will need:

Fabric

Elastic

Sewing machine

A rectangle of cotton

Old knickers (to be cut up)

Paper (for pattern)

Scissors

1. Cut a pair of knickers at the hip seams and crotch. Make sure they are made of a similar fabric to the fabric that you are using (strechy, cotton etc). Remove the elastic if they are non strech material. This is to make your pattern.

2. Draw around your old knickers onto a piece of paper, this is your pattern.

3.You can use any material, I used this old nighty that I never wore. Don't bin it, upcycle it!!

4. Place the pattern onto your fabric and draw around it, you can use chalk to do this or special dissapearing ink pens. Then cut the 2 shapes out.

5. The first bit of sewing is the crotch area. Get the retangle of cotton (I used an old Tshirt) and the front and back panels of the knickers. With the crotch lined up, place the front panel - right side up, the back panel - right side down on top, then the rectangle right side down on top of that. (I hope you're following this!!). Sew along this line.

6. Fold out the front and back panels so that the right sides are both facing down, and flip over the cotton rectangle so it is right side up. You will now see that the seam you have just sewn is hidden! hurrah!(arrow 1.). Now you need to hem the other end (arrow 2.), just fold it over and sew it. No need to sew it onto the knickers as its attached at the other end.

7. Sew together the hip seams.

8.You need to have an overcasting foot for your sewing maching to do this next bit. If you do, put it on now. If you don't, just hem the knickers all the way round both legs and the waist.

9. Choose an overcasting stitch to suit your fabric (practise on a spare bit to get the right length of stich etc). Overcast all the way round the legs and waist to stop the fabric fraying.

10. This is my wonderful assistant helping me to take a photo of the elastic! I cut two pieces 19 inches (for the legs) and one 22 inches (for the waist).



11. Here I'm going to divert you to a youtube video of how to sew in your elastic, as I'm sure I will needlessly complicate matters if I try!!

12. The material should start to rouch up like this, creating beautiful frilly knickers. Sew your elastic around both legs and the waist.

Et Voila!!!

So here are your nifty thrifty knickers!!

Let me know if you make them, I would love to see different takes on them!



Knickers

I made some knickers!!

I feel like I've been so busy lately, not having time to make anything or update my blog...and I was doing so well with my daily posts! I'm getting back in the zone, and to start with I thought I'd share my 'trial and error' knickers.

 These were the knickers that got sacrificed (for the pattern)

 This was the first error (I didn't take into account that the fabric wasn't streachy...silly me!)

The finished product!!

They look very cute on! I'm going to put up a tutorial in the next week or so...once I've mastered them.



3 Good Things.

• Saturday coffee dates before work with Mr. seem to be becoming a regular occurrence, and I love it!
• Being safe in the knowledge that I have 6 days off!!!
• I discovered this AMAZING blog post from Rock'n'Roll Bride (no I'm not getting married....I just like her blog OK!) a DIY Tutorial on how to make your own cake stand, I know what I'm doing next week!

........................

Pom Pom Tutorial

My Pom Pom on my favourite hat got mangled in the wash the other day, tragedy! After a few hours of heart break I decided it was about time I refreshed my knowledge of Pom Pom making and get making me a new one. I decided to use red wool as one of my dear friends gave it to me and I have yet to muster up the courage (or gain the skill) to make something worthwhile out of it, also it gave my hat a new look!

Here's how I made it:

Step 1 - Cut out two cardboard discs the same size. Make sure the inner circle is quite a bit smaller than the outer circle as this will stop your Pom Pom falling to pieces at the final stages! To cut out the inner circle you can cut a straight line from the outer edge to get to it, this will also help you to remove the cardboard at the end.

Step 2 - Place to two cardboard discs together.

Step 3 - Start wrapping your wool around the cardboard discs. You don't need to tie them to it. I have used two pieces of wool and wrapped them around it together (because I'm very inpatient and it's alot quicker!!). Don't worry if you run out of wool, just cut off another length and keep on going (still no need to tie, sorry if this is obvious but I kept on wanting to tie the loose ends together!).

Step 4 - Wrap the wool around the disc about 3 times, you can do more or less depending on the thickness of your wool and how dense you want your Pom Pom to be. I did mine 3 times with very chunky wool. Now it should look like this:

Step 5 - Now to release your Pom Pom, I used embroidery scissors to start off to cut through to the cardboard disc. Then, if you want to, get some bigger scissors and keeping one blade between the two cardboard discs, cut around the edge of the Pom Pom.

Being careful not to let it fall apart it should now look like this:

Step 6 - Get a piece of wool and place it in between the cardboard discs and wrap it around the Pom Pom. This is what holds it all together so it is very important to tie it very tight.

Step 7 - Once you have tied it, remover the cardboard discs et voila! You may have to cut some longer pieces of wool to make it a nice shape. You can use the wool that you used to tie it together to attach it to what ever you so choose, which in my case is my hat!

Happy Pomming!

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