Frontality

Owen's Sundays

2011-10-30T12:21:00.002Z

So, I have been rather remiss in my postings of late but being a mum takes up rather a lot of time - who'd have thought?!

But in order to keep everyone up to date with the progress of the boy wonder and just to have a nice record I have started a new blog where I will post a new picture of Owen every week. If you are interested head over and check it out:

www.owenssundays.blogspot.com

Baking

2011-06-24T23:14:00.000+01:00

So, I have an idea.

I was surfing the net looking for pictures of cakes to send to a friend for whom I am baking a birthday cake and came across this site http://www.thebakeproject.com/

This is amazing!! The blogger is aiming to bake every recipe in a cookbook called 'Bake' which contains 549 recipes. This is an idea I can totally get behind. I often end up making the same few recipes over and over and a project like this would definitely stop that happening!

I am going to have to think seriously about this.. what cookbook to choose? Should I do one I already have or get one especially?

Actually, I am looking forward to the publication of a charity recipe book at my work which will be the result of the Masterbaker competition which is running company wide. Each entrant gets one chance to bake something which is rated by the other bakers in their heat for a chance to go through to the finals (for my entry see my previous post She's playing with the big kids now). I don't know how many entrants there are but there must be over 100 and surely everyone will be putting forward their best recipe. Methinks this will be a cookbook of win! Every cake I have tried so far has been seriously yummy. Yes, folks I think we might have a winner.

The only thing that is lacking is that so far my photography of my baking projects has been somewhat lackluster but the lighting in our place now is much better than in our old place so hopefully there will be many more photos of my baking triumphs (or possibly fails) in future.

More to follow soon folks

(FYI, when I say soon.... I'd really take that with a pinch of salt...)

I heart grafitti

2011-06-13T11:53:00.002+01:00

She's playing with the big kids now...

2011-05-22T19:57:00.001+01:00

This is the coolest looking cake I have ever made :D

Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-Z

2011-03-20T17:23:00.000Z

From Like Cool via Pinterest

The end of publishing?

2011-03-20T15:41:00.000Z

A cute wee video from DK

Spring!

2011-03-20T14:48:00.000Z

So, I haven't posted much in a while.. there are two reasons for this (well three* if I am honest). The first is that is has been winter so I haven't been out taking many photographs, the second and more fundamental one is that I am pregnant (due 22 August, excitement!) and have have been suffering from fairly horrid morning sickness and some quite spectacular fatigue (staying in bed all day on the weekend was so exhausting that I'd have to have an afternoon nap to recover!). I am now emerging into the second trimester and am feeling a bit more like a person again - just a very hungry person. So here I am :)

Yesterday was the first really beautiful, warm day of the spring and I went for a walk around the village we are living in and took a few pics which I will now inflict on you :)

The first flowers have been slowly coming out over the last few weeks here in Oxfordshire and watching first the snowdrops and then the daffodils come out has really cheered me up (winter and I don't get on very well). Here are some daffs with the first bluebells I have seen:

This was a really English wall with ivy and the daffodils and showing the top of the wall would have been really nice, but there was a house behind the wall which rather spoiled it so I just cut it out!

I liked this photo for the contrast of the dead brown leaves of the hedge, the bare branches of the tree and the lush green and yellow of the daffodils below with the beautiful blue of the sky in the background. Yum.

The horizon in this one is a bit crooked as I was lying down in some gravel to try and get it all in, and it didn't even turn out that well, but maybe you get the idea:

Another view of the same little patch of water this time with the mini-house which was floating in it in view. Not quite sure what the little house was for, but it looked cute..

I just quite liked this door knocker:

How terribly English, in that very chocolate box-y kind of way:

Anyway, thanks for your patience and I'll try and be a better blogger in future.

* The third reason is that I am just generally a big slacker....

Sweetest photo ever

2011-02-26T10:57:00.000Z

from http://deadkennedysandattractivemen.tumblr.com

via http://coleytangerina.tumblr.com

Melted Snowman Cookies

2010-12-19T15:45:00.000Z

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!

Kiddie Lit

2010-12-13T22:48:00.000Z

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...?

2010-11-29T09:55:00.002Z

When live gives you oil spills...

2010-09-24T19:29:00.001+01:00

Tasty yarn

2010-09-21T21:40:00.001+01:00

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

What to do with earings?

2010-09-19T02:31:00.000+01:00

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!

Another bookshelf

2010-09-05T21:19:00.000+01:00

Awesome use of the Neuland Random bookshelf!!

Best carrot cake recipe!

2010-08-27T15:12:00.000+01:00

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!

Jar art supply storage

2010-08-20T23:12:00.000+01:00

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

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

Hilaire Belloc - Tarantella

2010-08-18T13:36:00.003+01:00

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

2010-08-18T13:19:00.002+01:00

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.

Snow - old photos

2010-06-10T21:48:00.008+01:00

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.

Bookshelves are cool!

2010-06-05T14:34:00.015+01:00

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...

Tree Bookshelf by Shawn Soh
Found via

Tangram bookshelf by Lago design Italy

Storyline Shelf designed by Frederik Roijé
Found via

Comic Shelves by Oscar Nunez

Found at

ShelfLife by Charles Trevellyan

Shelf in the Wind by Olivia Blechschmidt

Found via

Seletti Assemblage

Incertum bookshelf by Sean Yoo

Pablo the Object Frame

Quad bookshelf by Nauris Kalinauskas

Found via

Nar coffee table bookshelf
“nar” means “pomegranate” in turkish. Pomegranate is a fruit that holds hundreds of juicy seeds inside

Munkii Vintage Shelf
Found via

Eric Guiomar cardboard bookshelf

REK Extending bookshelf by Reinier de Jong

Found via

Equation bookshelf

Found via

Daniele Lago Book Tree

Found via

Ceiling book shelves

Found via

Brace Case by Ward Huting
fully customisable
Found via

Bookworm bookshelf by Ron Arad
Flexible can be bent and shaped into any shape
Found via

Lovely Rita bookshelf by Ron Arad
Found via

The Wisdom Tree Bookshelf by Jordi Milà

Elipse bookshelf
Found via

Biblioteca bookshelf

Wine crate display boxes

Instructions for making your own here

Autumn bookshelf

This is the epic library in Minsk:

If getting new shelves isn't on the cards perhaps you could just sort them by colour:

Or get or make some inserts:

Or find some interesting shelving for other household items:

I should just not be allowed to go on the internet.. ever.

2010-05-31T14:03:00.005+01:00

I should just not be allowed to go on the internet.. ever. I was researching a future blog post and I stumbled across this:

http://www.gilesmiller.com/

A Queen's Head Mirror, with its own pearl neclace no less.. it is so cute, and not even out of my price range either. Damn trying to save money.. it is so difficult.

This is Just to Say

2010-05-27T20:10:00.002+01:00

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-- William Carlos Williams

Stays Down Low

2010-05-19T21:07:00.010+01:00

Right around the time we got our cat Ian had given me to read a book called House of Tribes about the adventures of tribes of mice living in a country house. One of the tribes in the house had a custom of naming its members the opposite of what they are like, so Falling Off Things has very good balance and Tread Lightly is very noisy. When we were trying to think of a name for the cat we seriously considered naming him Stays Down Low because right from when he was young he has really liked being up high.

He loved climbing up our clothes airer...

And he even used to sleep up there in an improvised hammock until he got too big.

But he has never grown out of climbing it.

Although sometimes he is more successful than others....

Ha, conquered!

But anywhere high up is good, here he is chilling out on top of the kitchen cupboards:

And in the bathroom on the towel rack:

Patrolling the window ledge:

And, the highest point in the house, on top of the topbox on the wardrobe:

Yup, I think Stays Down Low would have been a very apt name for the little bugger!

2010-04-22T20:41:00.001+01:00

I am going to a book launch in this room, lush!

Spring has sprung

2010-04-22T20:15:00.006+01:00

In celebration of the glorious weather we have been having recently here are some photos I took during a recent walk.

White Horse - The List

2010-04-07T21:30:00.009+01:00

I have a list. This list is the list of all the things that I want to do while I am living in the UK.

The reason that I have a such a list is a) I'm just that kinda gal, and b) when I was at university I worked with an Irish girl who had only been in New Zealand for a year or so and had seen more of it than I had seen in my 20-odd years of living there. She was able to tell me to go here or there and could rave about all the amazing things she had seen to me, and I hadn't seen hardly any of them myself. It was after this that I vowed to be a perpetual tourist, no matter where I was, not matter how long I had been there. So: I have a list.

Over Easter I went to see the White Horse at Uffington. The White Horse was created by cutting away the turf to reveal the white, chalky soil underneath and dates back about 3,000 years.

Just below the White Horse is Dragon Hill where legend has it St. George slew the dragon. The bare patch of chalk where no grass will grow is supposedly where the dragon's blood spilled.

This is a photo of it from the air which I have had to 'borrow' from another website as you cannot see it from the ground.

Here are some of my photos...

Some chalk

From here the horse kind of looks like an angry bird

A lonely tree

Dragon Hill is the square hill in the background

The Ordnance Survey marker on the top of the hill

I love pirates

2010-03-27T20:52:00.002Z

Why are pirates called pirates?
They just ARRRRRRRRRRRR!

What does a pirate say when he has a heart attack?
Arrr, me heartie!

What does a dyslexic pirate say?
RAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Why does it take pirates so long to learn the alphabet?
Because they can spend years at C.

What is the distance from the centre of a circle of pirates to the edge?
ARRRRRRRRRRRRR

I'm so lame....

Want Want Want!

2010-03-25T21:59:00.010Z

I was looking on some random craft sites from New Zealand and found the following. I want pretty much everything on this site!

Custom poetry ring

Kia Kaha - Stand Strong, Aroha - Love

http://www.endemicworld.com/nz-designers/ailish-jewellery.html

Keep Calm and Carry On

2010-03-23T21:12:00.008Z

I am absolutely obsessed with ideas for decorating my home at the moment.. only problem is I'm not going to have a 'home' for at least another year and a half to two years. This is not to say that I am homeless, I am just living in a little rental that I know I am not going to be in for that much longer as I will am planning to move back home to New Zealand in about a year and a half.

Anyway, my latest find is the below vinyl wall sticker which I am absolutely in love with and am definitely going to purchase. There is loads of cool stuff on the site, but I plan to (try to) paint my walls myself where possible.

From: http://dalidecals.com/Keep-Calm-and-Carry-On-Wall-Decal-Sticker-Graphic.html

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my blog of random stuff...

Frontality

Owen's Sundays

Baking

I *heart* grafitti

She's playing with the big kids now...

Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-Z

The end of publishing?

Spring!

Sweetest photo ever

Melted Snowman Cookies

Kiddie Lit

When live gives you oil spills...

Tasty yarn

What to do with earings?

Another bookshelf

Best carrot cake recipe!

Jar art supply storage

Hilaire Belloc - Tarantella

This is nice

Snow - old photos

Bookshelves are cool!

I should just not be allowed to go on the internet.. ever.

This is Just to Say

Stays Down Low

Spring has sprung

White Horse - The List

I love pirates

Want Want Want!

Keep Calm and Carry On

I heart grafitti