Expired.

Olympus Trip 35. 

Film expired 2001. 

Flickr.

Pop!

My mum just bought a book on cake pops, and as me and my friends were stuck with what to get another friend for her birthday, I decided to have a go at making my own.

I LOVE how they turned out! Yes they're sickly sweet as the cake mix has buttercream in it and they've covered in melted chocolate, but they look amazing so I don't think it even matters how they taste!

 

The coating is melted Candy Melts which I got from Hobbycraft (I got the pink, white and red ones, but I burnt the white ones...oops!)

 

The lolly sticks are also from Hobbycraft

The candy roses, pink and white pearls and red glimmer sugar are all from Asda.

My mum came up with the genius idea of using a colander to hold the cake pops while they set.

Cheeeeeesey Goodness.

My mum has been getting into all sorts of country kitchen hobbies now that we live in the countryside - she grows her own vegetables, there was talk of getting chickens etc, and her latest venture is cheese making. I've been recruited as her assistant, and the first cheese we tried out was halloumi, a personal favourite.

It's actually a pretty easy process, doesn't take very long and requires very few ingredients. The main ingredient is milk and you have to get a very specific type, but I'm not going to go into full details. But in case anyone's interested here's a photographic journey through the process:

This whole idea stemmed from a book my mum got from Lakeland. If you can read the page you'll see the only ingredients are milk, vinegar and a bit of salt.
The book is called "How To Make Soft Cheese".

Very appetizing looking skin forming at this point but it smelt so, so good!
   

Looked pretty disgusting at this point! We had to "skim the solids" to separate them from the whey. I was very much reminded of Little Miss Muffet!

Left to set overnight in a conical mould.

The final product.
   

We sliced the halloumi up and had it in a naan bread with some tomato. We'd usually eat it with pitta bread but we didn't have any so we improvised and used naan instead! 

To be honest, it didn't have a whole lot of flavour and it could have done with a little more seasoning. But not bad for a first attempt! I think we're going to try mozzarella next.

Home.

Today's flickr upload explores the idea of 'home', a new set (found here)

Far

Beach Huts

Houses Blur

Pastel Houses

Think of Me

Homely.

Flickr

This was also made photo of the day on the Analogue Sunrise website and Facebook page :)

Facebook

Analogue Sunrise

Some More Crafty Bits....

Day 2 of food and craft for me and my little sister Sophie.

I've posted the food, now for the craft :)

Firstly, my pom making skills have vastly improved :) 

Me and Soph went with mum to a craft shop in the village and mum took pity on my poor unemployed self and bought me some tissue paper! Haha 89p for a packet of 10 sheets and I got 5 different coloured packets. (I clearly didn't take advantage of her willingness to spend money on me, but then again she did buy me petrol last week, which is the most expensive thing ever when you're jobless, so I'm very grateful to her for that!)

Anyway, I digress. So, poms. 

I think this corner of my room looks much better now. All full size poms, this time with ribbon holding them up, so they look more complete. (Although I'm not allowed to use anything other than blu tak on my walls (or in this case pink tak!) so it doesn't look so great at the top, but nothing I can really do about that)
My desk is right below the window so I'm sitting here looking at them, so pretty! I also added another white pom to the other side with the cranes, but I don't have a photo of that.

These blue ones were for Sophie's room, which has a duck egg blue colour scheme.

I absolutely love, love, love bunting.
I made this miniature bunting with some scraps of material I had. So cute!

I've completely run out of anywhere to put more bunting though, so I had to put it round the top of my wardrobe (there's already bunting running across the inside) but I think it's small enough to not be overpowering. In fact I'm considering making another chain so it can reach all the way to the floor.

That shadow on the bottom right is really weird and I have no idea what it's from :S 

I can take no credit for this, this is all my sister's doing. She could really do well as a crafter if she wasn't so set on working with horses (though she's only 13 so there's plenty of time for me to persuade her otherwise!)
She's making all her friend's christmas presents this year, and she's making them either a dreamcatcher or a little garland with their names on. She made me a dreamcatcher a couple of months ago, which is hanging up in my car, but it wasn't a cute little heart like these so I'm trying to convince her to make me one too!

She's definitely talented and creative, making each one personal to each of her friend :)

The downside to all this crafting fun; the absolute mess it leaves in my room!
The floor was my doing, the bed Sophie's.
We also made just as much mess of the kitchen table when we ran out of room to put anything down in there! Oops.

Another thing me and Sophie have been getting into is nail art.
I don't have any fancy tools or anything, so we've been trying to be creative with just what we have. Not bad for a first try right?!

So that was today's fun. I feel like I typed a lot in this post :S

We were also discussing maybe trying to sell some of this stuff, mainly the dreamcatchers, miniature bunting and heart bunting from my earlier post (so stuff we haven't copied from some tutorial somewhere but came up with ourselves) but we're not sure if there would be any interest in any of it. Any thoughts?