Tuesday 12 April 2011

The 52 Marvellous Makes Madness Challenge - Weeks 33 and 34!

Hello, hello bonny bloggers.  

First things first, my oven is mended, yay!!!  Relief....must bake something today (am thinking scones).  There was a slight delay in it taking a few days to realize buying over the net was the way to go as our local shops were pants.  We managed fine without an oven in the main due to me having a cold over the weekend. Ladies you may know what I mean when I say, if I'm poorly not much meal production happens at the hands of Mr Biscuit. 
Why is it that after a busy busy time you catch a cold?  It's a bit worrying that the night before it hit I was handling cakes at the schools Birthday celebrations baking stall.  If any of you have never had the pleasure (???) of manning a baking stall let me tell you it's insane!!!  Unbelievably busy!  The teachers helping me didn't believe me when I said to get ready for it to get scary.  It'll be like childbirth, I'll forget how bad it is by the time I'm asked to do it again.  There are perks as you get to choose what you want before it sells/sells out, on this night meringues and cream, yummy!!
The Biscuits school was celebrating it's 40th Birthday and it was cool to see photos of Mr Biscuit all Ginger and clad in 70's brown fairisle jumpers.  Not so good was the idea to light lanterns in the playground, at one point it was like The Hindenburg, watching one burning away to nothing not very high up in the air.  All the health and safety plans went out of the window when people realized it was better to use a lighter rather than queuing to get to a designated lighter, it got a bit scary with kids running around chasing lit ones.  It probably seemed like a great idea in the meetings...
Eldest Biscuit was also in a production of Oliver.  School productions and assemblies are always a joy to witness.

So to business...



Week 33 



I find it ridiculous that no matter how many (cough four) pin cushions I have, when I am sewing I inevitably have to stretch my way around mess - messy pup remember? -  to reach whichever one[s] I have out to get a pin so I thought one of these fellas might be handy.  It is, I am happy to report!  A wee simple rosebud made of felt sewn on to a ring, easy peasy!



Week 34


A Fish[y] brooch.

Made for a birthday gift on a creative whim giving a bit of freehand/machine embroidery a go.  I'm not entirely happy with it but....  Made with felt, fabric from my stash and the dinkiest wee spotty 'love bug' button.  I like to describe these buttons as raindrops on fingertips.  They are available from lovepaperfish.com if you'd like some.


More weeks to come....


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Tuesday 5 April 2011

A list of one thing (so not really a list) that I hate. Hate more than....

...being late, U2, mediocrity, bad cake and hangovers.


1.  When I went to put lemon cake mixture into my only working oven to find, in the time it had taken me to put together the mix, the element had overheated and gone kaput.

Let me just clarify, No EFFING OVEN SO NO EFFING CAKE!!!!!!

Please someone take this blade from my heart. 
I am not exaggerating.  I am beyond devastated and am not even going to discuss that homemade pizza was on the menu tonight....
Ignoring the fact that Mr Biscuit is and Electrician and elements are easy to get a hold of etc etc....my heart is broken, I feel I have lost a limb.  My birthday cake- my wee gift to myself - is still sitting on the worktop wondering it's fate.  Will it make it into an oven- am considering the risk of moving it to my parent-in-laws - or never furfil it's telos and become sponge because of it hanging around in it's unbaked state for hours?  I admit it will be hard for the baker in me to risk moving and/or baking at this stage in the game!

I wonder do you, my fellow bloggers, know me enough to understand the gravity of  my loss?

Yes of course you do!! 
 Don't you???

"you go home and you cry and you want to die!" and "heaven knows I'm miserable now!"

Morrissey knows what I mean!


Today I am putting the 'drama' in Drama Queen, well because I want to *stamps foot*!

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Monday 4 April 2011

A Random List of 38 things I love (that I can think of at the mo) for my birthday!


Which is today by the way!  You find me hungover (not enough sleep for the amount of wine I consumed. I should know better at my age!) and feeling very delicate...the sofa and my new Gene Kelly box set awaits.


A List

1.Cake -  I know it comes as a shock!
2.When you move a fairy bottle and an ickle bubble pops out of the top.  For some reason I have always called washing up liquid shopping up liquid.  Mind you I always call cotton buds pipe cleaners.  I get names muddled very easily.
3.When my eldest made the joke about an orthodontist being a dentist who writes books.
4. Getting absolutely soaked in the rain and having to strip off and get completely changed, even knickers.  I have a vivid memory of one occasion doing this at uni in Glasgow which left me so invigorated with being alive, I have never forgotten it.
5. A really good bowl of soup.  I could eat soup every other day easy peasy.
6. The smell of wild garlic on a woodland walk.
7. A robin puffing out its chest.  My most favourite bird to see in the garden.  Makes me think of the Jackson Five too which in turn leads me to think of 70’s music clubs of my youth in Edinburgh, MC5, very short dresses, hotpants and feather boas.
8. Roast chicken.  Easily the best Sunday dinner of all time and number one in our family Top Ten Meals.  We do like to do Top Tens whilst sitting at the table together.
9.Pantomimes.  I will boo and hiss at the baddies in my loudest voice every time. 
10. Feeling part of a crafting community - it’s all so very inspiring.
11. The alchemy of baking - it is truly amazing!!
12. Stroking a newly smoothed, sugar pasted cake.  It’s almost erotic how much I love doing it.  If you had a go you’d understand.
13. When my hubby makes fun of me mixing up the name of electric appliances.  I do every day.  He says because I don’t fully pay attention to what I am saying.  He has a point.
14. When a plan comes together!   Picture me with cigar in mouth.  Something I haven’t done for a long, long time but I do remember partaking in way back when a) I was a smoker and b) it was sometimes a great idea to end an evening at a pub.  Smelly though!
15. A box of embroidery thread – akin to Willy Wonka’s edible room, it’s so enticing and magical.
16. Harry Potter, Doctor Who and Percy Jackson.  I am a geek!!
17. When you’ve been slicing chilli and your fingers numb your tongue for hours afterwards.  Me and my Biscuits will take turns for a finger dab on the tongue at the dinner table, much to the annoyance of Mr Biscuit.
18. Brora cardigans.  I am lucky in saying I own one ( purchased for our wedding day, cost more than my dress) and would love to be able to afford many more in many colours.
19. Knitting – especially small animals with coloured needles.
20. Cats napping.  It is a sight that fills me with such contentment.  My Hamish ‘the mancat’ can snore for Scotland making me chuckle to myself when alone.  Laughing when you are by yourself, I think, always feels all the more funny.
21. Trampolines.  “Bouncy  Bouncy.  Ooh What a good time!  Bouncy Bouncy.  Shoes all in a line!”  They are just silly and I always end up hurting my back but I will insist on going back on them.
22. Dancing.  I LOVE dancing.  It makes me so happy. I will be on a dance floor all night.  I confess I barely spoke to a soul at our Wedding, I was too busy dancing, from the first dance to Runrig at the end.  I very rarely have a partner and care not a jot if anyone else is on the dance floor.
23. Flowers. Lillies, roses, tulips to name but a few.
24. Donkeys.  This is the animal I would have if I had land.  Of course not just one, never only one.
25. Buttons.  Luckily I have a Dealer for this addiction.  (Fishy, you know I mean you.)
26. Foxes.  I always feel just a little bit wrong in loving an animal that will kill and not necessarily eat its victims.  I love their pointy faces, I cannot help myself.
27. Watching trees blowing in the wind.  It’s hypnotic and like the next ‘love’, a reminder of my insignificance.  Except when I have been watching The Happening, then they FREAK me out something silly.
28.The sea, especially on dull grey Scottish days where it looks like concrete it’s so still. 
29. Breaking eggs.  Since the days of being a teeny toddler pretending to be Calimero [cartoon chicken who wore half an egg shell on his head] putting a tea cosy on my head, I have be taken with egg shell. 
30. Reading for large blocks of time.  I don’t do it much these days for lack of such indulgent time yet every now and again I give it a go and usually nod off.  I remember reading more than one book in a day and confess when a new Harry potter came out, once I got to the end I’d start over again.
31. A large glass of red.  I love red wine, particularly Austrailian.  When I eventually get over to visit my brother in law, I WILL be touring the vineyards!  NB.not so much today - blast this darn hangover!!
32. Tea in a china cup and saucer.  You all know why!
33. Jane Austen.  I love the language and the excruciating romance of her books.  The rules, the taking of tea and calling cards, visits, the dancing, the humour.  Wonderful!
34. Hedgehogs.  They can roll into a spikey ball!!!  What more can I say?
35. Christmas.  Simply Christmas.
36. Disaster films.  The more devastatingly ‘end of the world’ the better.  Special effects these days make for amazing films but I am still partial to a bit of Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure.
37. Me in a Narrowboat meandering along a canal (Guy Martin optional).  If it wasn’t so darn expensive I would do it every year.  A custom built one is first on the lottery wish list.
38.Classic Fm.  I don’t do radio.  I get very irritated by songs with singing, it may aswell be people screaming at me but classical music calms me and I had the best Christmas baking build up ever in 2010 listening to it EVER.  Except Lawrence LB, he kinda spoils it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
     Can  you imagine the length of this post if I was older? Deary me.  I think I may share the same trait as the wonderful Stephen Fry in using many words instead of a few to say what I want to say. I so wish I had lemon cake (hoping the sponge would help with the HO) but will suffice with the ickle white chocolate tarts I have in the fridge leftover from yesterdays Mother's Day family gathering.  I am in need of a sit down and a cup of tea.



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