Frontality: 2010

19 December 2010

Melted Snowman Cookies

So these are kind of morbid and sad (I always cry when I read The Snowman by Raymond Briggs) but totally cute at the same time, if that is possible.

from Crazy Domestic

There is a how-to if you follow the link :) Yay for the internet!

13 December 2010

Well, I haven't posted in a while.. you can blame all 5 seasons of The Wire for that.. But here I am back on the wagon again. But onto the actual subject of the post... kids books.

I love children's literature, I always have. I guess I just never grew up. I still read all kinds of children's books from picture books to teen fiction. I even still know the whole of Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg off by heart. I have always wanted to have my own collection of all the great books I remember from when I was a kid and to keep building it with new additions. It will be so enjoyable to share the books with my kids (although I'm not sure that they will actually be allowed to touch the out of print books!) but also just to have and enjoy myself. To this end I spent an afternoon browsing on Amazon looking up all the books I could remember and linking through to even more books. It may sound weird but I had a really fun time and just couldn't help smiling and oohing and ahhing as I found more and more awesome books.

I put all the books I wanted onto a wish list so that I could keep track of them for future reference.. by the end of the afternoon I had 100 books on the list. If each book cost an average of £5 that is £500. Perhaps I was a little ambitious, but there aren't any books I would want to take off the list... I guess this really is going to have to be a lifetime project!

Anyway, I thought that I would share a few of the books here, please let me know if there are any books missing which you think are unmissable, this list certainly isn't comprehensive, and although I think I am fairly well read in children's literature, I am sure that there are many, many books that I don't know about!

You can't have a list of children's books without Where the Wild Things Are

There are loads more but the upload tool has decided that I am not allowed to do anything else today, and it is time for bed. More another day maybe...

What do you think of my list...?

29 November 2010

24 September 2010

When live gives you oil spills...

21 September 2010

Tasty yarn

I have come to the conclusion that I am not really a knitter, mostly I think I am just a buyer of yarn who occasionally does some knitting so she can justify her purchases (at least a little bit). I think this might be my next purchase.. it is just tasty.

http://www.straw.com/cpy/index.html

19 September 2010

What to do with earings?

I'm sure it is a question you ask yourself daily.. or maybe not, but it might be something that comes up occasionally. Mostly mine sit around on whatever surface is nearest when I take them off - which can end up being almost anything! Perhaps having somewhere sensible to put my earings is what is missing from my life... If you too are missing somewhere to put your earings and are of a crafty bent maybe you can make use of one of these ideas.

Wire backed frame with step by step instructions? Yes please!

http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/our-home/tutorial-shabby-chic-dangly-earring-display.html

Home made fabric backed frame by my lovely friend Coley

http://coleytangerina.tumblr.com/

Or put everything in cute retro teacups

photo via marthastuart.com, argh!

5 September 2010

Another bookshelf

Awesome use of the Neuland Random bookshelf!!

27 August 2010

Best carrot cake recipe!

At my old job the kitchen used to make the absolute best carrot cake ever, it was amazing! The cake was so moist and the icing, perfect!

I managed to get my sticky little hands on a copy of the recipe (thanks Carmen!) and so I thought I would share it. I'm just the giving sort.

Carrot Cake

8 oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
4 eggs
8 oz caster sugar
6 fl oz vegetable oil
8 oz grated carrots
8 oz tinned crushed pineapple

Sift together the dry ingredients. Beat together the eggs and add sugar and oil and beat well. Add carrots and pineapple. Line the base of a 9 inch spring clip cake tin, and bake well at 180*C for 40 mins. Test and leave the cake to settle for 15 mins at least before removing from tin.

Frosting
Beat together:
4 oz butter
4 oz cream cheese (Philadelphia)
4 oz icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

Keep in the fridge, does not keep well after a week, too soggy (not that it should ever last that long anyway!).

Enjoy!

20 August 2010

Jar art supply storage

I want a house to decorate so bad! To quote my friend Coley: crafting fo' life

Found at: http://weepingcherries.wordpress.com

18 August 2010

Hilaire Belloc - Tarantella

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the spreading
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of the tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark verandah)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteeers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the Din?
And the Hip! Hop! Hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the twirl and the swirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of a clapper to the spin
Out and in ---
And the Ting, Tong, Tang, of the Guitar.
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar:
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the Halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far Waterfall like Doom.

- Hilaire Belloc

This is nice

After stumbling across this blog [This is nice? Yeah] I remembered that this blog is actually supposed to be a collection of things I like and not just something I have in order to make myself feel perpetually guilty for not updating it. So, here are some paintings:

In honour of my recent trip to Paris here is one of Robert Delaunay's Eiffel Tower paintings:

And probably one of my favourite paintings, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp (1912):

That is all.

10 June 2010

Snow - old photos

So, I realised that I haven't cleaned out one of my cameras for like 9 months...

In January the UK was hit by some epic snow:

These are some photos that I took whilst we were attempting to get to work one day...

These photos are from when I went in to Oxford a couple of days later and the snow had melted somewhat:

This was actually way cooler in real life - the water dripping out of the pipe was all thick and slushy and made the icicles look like they were moving!

The Radcliffe Camera with pub doorway in the foreground.

Pretty old house with ubiquitous Oxford bicycles.

5 June 2010

Bookshelves are cool!

I was sitting around once and flicking through a House and Garden magazine, not something that I am often wont to do as I know that I will never be able to afford anything in them, but I fell in love. I saw something I had never considered before, a bookshelf which was not only a place for books but also a piece of art in and of itself.

Neuland/MDF Italia Random bookshelf

This was years ago now, but I have never forgotten. It occurred to me that what with the wonders of the internet that I could maybe find more interesting bookshelves.. Here are the results...