Yummy.

Ok so breaking from tradition again and posting about food :)

My sister's on half term this week and it's almost tradition now for us to bake when she's on school holidays, so this is what we've made the last 2 days.

(Apologies for the rubbish photos, they're from my phone :S)

This first recipe is Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies (from intoruth, thanks Ruth!)

These taste so, so good! I had to estimate on some of the ingredients because the recipe has American measurements (how is "1 cup" an accurate measurement?!) but it all worked out well in the end! Seriously try these. We put the whole packet of oreos in with both milk and white chocolate chunks.


Recipe 2 is red velvet cupcakes.

These were my brother's request. They're pretty much just fairy cakes with red food colouring in, so very easy to make.

I used this recipe, and added about a teaspoon of red colouring in (we got the paste stuff rather than the liquid) and then a buttercream icing which my sister knows the recipe for off by heart (that's how often she bakes!) and she made it so I don't know the measurements for, but very easy to find out I'm sure.

Definitely felt a bit American making these, I'm sure they're an American thing? They're mentioned in a few American films anyway, but tasty all the same, and I'm taking the really tiny ones to a friend's dinner party tomorrow where I'm sure they'll go down well :)

Bit of Italian now, we made pizza.

My sister made pizza at school a couple of weeks ago and wanted to make them for dinner, and I volunteered to help, not realising she would make me knead the dough, which is really hard work!
Anyway, I ended up making my pizza with a mozzarella stuffed crust (which fell apart when cooked so didn't quite go to plan :S) and I put passata, mozzarella, borsin, chicken, sweetcorn and mixed herbs on the top. So, so good. But ridiculously filling so I have half for lunch tomorrow! Yum.

Photographer of the Week.

I'm going to be made Photographer of the Week on the Volume Blog :)

I'm so, so excited about this!!
I don't really consider myself very talented when it comes to photography, especially not when compared to other people, but it's something that I really love to do and am getting into so much more recently, so it's great to get some recognition for this!

It'll be posted 31 October, so keep an eye out! Volume shows work from some really wonderful artists and photographers so it's great to be involved :)

Crafty Day.

Me, my sister Sophie and my friend Fi had a bit of a crafty afternoon today :)

Paper daisy tutorial here.

Fi managed to make a couple of these to take home with her. She's not arty or crafty at all so she was very pleased with herself!

My sister made these heart garlands.

A joint effort between me and Sophie to make this new home card for our grandparents :)

I fell in love with this. DIY Tassle Garland tutorial here.

This picture made me really want to make these paper poms.

I followed a couple of tutorials (here and here) to make these, and they're a lot harder than they look so I'm still trying to get the hang of them! The pink one is the only one that really worked properly :S I'm going to get some more tissue paper tomorrow though and keep practicing!

We also made paper cranes to hang with the white pom :)

It took us a while to get the hang of making the cranes but by using both this tutorial and this tutorial, we finally managed it :)

A Photoshoot in the Forest.

Well today's outing showed me that I don't really have a "photographer's eye". I could picture what I wanted to achieve in my head (pretty much based on what I've seen other people achieve) but I don't have the skills to implement this.

I did enjoy it though. My sister doesn't make a particularly good model, she kept laughing and pulling stupid faces. But I think I got at least a few good photos (although these have all been edited the crap out in photoshop!)

So anyway, the story.

I wanted to go somewhere where we wouldn't be interrupted (it's not exactly normal to take balloons to the woods, is it? I live in the countryside so we're surrounded by woodland, but we just happened to choose the woods that a load of school children were going on a trip to! Mighty embarrassing. We packed up pretty quickly when they came along.

We did three different set ups, the first was Sophie in the little den we found. The second she sat on a little bridge over a stream (this was when the school kids came along, so that photo is the only one I took there!) and the final set up we tried to get both of us in but I didn't have my tripod so I propped the camera on a branch, which didn't work particularly well :S

Probably because I'm not imaginative or creative enough, but I don't really like shooting set ups like these. I prefer to just stumble across something beautiful and capture that moment, rather than creating a fake one.

Chicken Parmigiana.

I don't usually blog about food, but I made this for the family for dinner tonight and it was soooo good, so I just had to!

I got the recipe from the BBC Good Food website. Yum yums.