Back to basics.

Hello there lovely people.

It has been an age.

Blogging has not been on my my very extensive list of things to do.

I haven't minded....

But I am here today......

I've been pondering of late if my blog title still applies. To the me of the 'now'. You know it has been a few years since I came up with the title and that stemmed from having to come up with a name on Etsy so I could, at the time, buy some buttons. 'cupcakesandbiscuits' seemed apt and fortuitous as it turned out. Adding the 'with love' part to the title of my blog seemed entirely natural as everything made should be made with love in my eyes. And with added cupcakes and biscuits for that matter.  They are the perfect description to me.  A cupcake is a compact, heavenly, fits in the palm of your hand, individual, sponge and buttercream, delight to behold. It is the perfect gift. Biscuits are too. A whole life of memories scattered on a wee vintage plate. A heady mix of childhood favourites and Scottish shortbread.  In my head when I make and bake something, these three things and all their connotations seep in. I cannot help but feel, quite right too.

*sigh*

I can see as I write, the title of my blog still applies and of that I am glad. It helps build that wee bridge back to my blog for me. An aid to a re-connection. 

A similar thing happened with the name of my Etsy shop. I couldn't use 'cupcakesandbiscuits' when I joined Twitter as it didn't fit size wise so I chose 'jammypudding'. I love that name as I love a pudding with jam and sometimes I feel a right jammy pudding. I found Instagram through Twitter and carried on with the name so when it was time to come up for a name for my shop it all fell into place. I love when that happens. It feels like I picked a name that turned out to be perfect for future endeavours. For when I started designing as well as making. When the creative me flowered. 

Next is my new Etsy shop for sewing accessories which I am calling 'jammypudding and custard'. For obvious reasons. Well an obvious love of cake and jam and custard. In that I am forever predictable. An extension of the brooch shop.  I am selling pincushions, scissor fobs and needlebooks already on Instagram but  I'll get the Etsy shop up and running in the near future.

Hopefully there are still willing readers out there to indulge this pondering of mine. I have stripped my blog a bit. Gone back to basics. Let us see what happens next.

Ali x

Find me on Twitter and Instagram as @jammypudding.

hallo, hallo...

Popping in to say hello to you all.
I am not a good blogger at all these days.
I seem not to care about that either...

Its a funny thing this blogging business.
I cannot blame Instagram for the lack of ponderings on here. It is a great instant photo sharing/quick response thing but it isn't stopping me from blogging.
I'm stopping me from blogging.
Not being on a laptop means I am getting more creative things done and I am not so great at sharing these on here anymore.  I get distracted on here, writing a post seems to take me an age. Reading blogs, getting sucked into Pinterest (which I deleted a while back and recently went on again), looking at tutorials etc distracts me big time. I have been making a lot. Quilts and socks and maggie rabbits. Lots of hours of hand sewing.
I suppose I am not a great sharer full stop really.  Blogging doesn't come naturally at all so we shall see. I've no desire to delete my blog or to take a brake or to force myself to write more posts but wanted to say hi to you all.
I hope you are all well and life is good.
Hope your wee hands are busy making.
Hope you are eating yummy scrummy cake sometimes and enjoying the summer.
Hope you have the time for a nice cup of tea and are getting plenty of sleep.
*waves*

Ali x

Hello hello, is anyone still out there?

Oh my it really has been the longest while since I blogged.  No excuses given, I simply haven't.  That's a bit of a fib I realize.  Whenever I think about having to organize my thoughts, cables for cameras etc I let out a huge sigh and think '*$!* it I'll do it later!'.
Later, invariably, never comes.
I have things to show you, subjectively feel good ta-dahs. Revelations on new crafty endeavours and new skills learned.  The discoveries of free machine embroiderey; being both 'so my thang' and sewn text neater than my actual handwriting.  A handmade Christmas (even though I promised myself I would buy more) and a poorly Christmas.
Last year was the year I fell out of like with blogging but this year, this lovely 2013 where I turn 40, I am determined I am getting back my blogging mojo.  I am planning a revamp, a reclaiming of  my cyber space. I am opening an Etsy shop soon too to sell my brooches so keep an eye out for that. I am focusing on 'keeping it real' which, for me, means remembering I am at my very core a blether, a chatterer, a verbal vomiting type and cannot compete (and don't want to) with any other blog. That I do not have to always have photos or subjects and definitely will  NOT be offering advice on how to use old plastic hand cream containers or tights. I forgot after a certain amount of time blogging why I started. I got bogged down with thoughts of 'what are you trying to say?', 'who are you trying to say it to?' and silly things like that.  Feckadoodle!! What on earth possessed me to have silly ponderings like that? I obviously was having a wobble!
All I want to do is chat, be creative and entertain myself and hopefully you lovely peeps who take the time to read my posts!
Sounds simple enough. Although I have had a thought, earlier on I wrote 'keeping it real'. OMFG! Wait a minute "OMFG"???? I fear I have swallowed an old person trying to be 'down with the kids'.  Oh dear....

Oh and 40!! How and when did enough time pass for that to be happening this year?

Hope you are all fine and dandy my intersweb pals. I have been as negligent of your blogs as I have mine for which I am sorry, I bet I missed loads of lovely posts.

X

Find me as @jammypudding on Instagram or Twitter.

Blogging and lack thereof...

I cannae be arsed, there I said it. 
I think about my wee blog and I just have nothing to say. Not a thing (or so I thought, well because obviously right now I am writing this post).  I could say I have lost my blogging mojo but that doesnae sit right with me either.  I just think honestly I cannae be arsed because really I am lazy.  I like being creative out there in the thing that is the 'world wide web' but I simply have discovered a quicker way of doing it. A quicker way of posting photos and a quicker response time.  My underlying impatience has won out so yes I adore Instagram.  It is an easy fix but, BUT, like many things I am starting to yearn for a slower pace.  Maybe I want to come back to my wee blog space and take my time again.  To ponder over things rather than give into the random, the now, the 'this just happend' or the 'I just made this'.  I love random and I love quick and for this reason I hardly ever even switch on Hortensia (my laptop) because I have an iphone even though the screen is tiny and typing is a serious pain the the below stairs. It's quick and easy and I like quick and easy (titter yee not!). A habit of such things has been formed and you know what? I miss my blogging friends who are not on Instagram or Twitter but unfortunately many of my favourite bloggers (I assume, like me) have lost their blogging enthusiasm also.  It takes way too long to write up a post and I am always curious about those bloggers who manage posts every other day if not everyday.  The whole 'professional' blogger is a discussion for another day but a lot of people seem to keep up the momentum when I cannot find the energy or enthusiasm for it at all. 

I have a review to write (sorry for the delay dotcomgiftshop) but I haven't got around to it.  I have been sewing lots and baking lots and knitting and crocheting and holidaying and reading and planning and well lots and lots of things we all do all the time and not felt the urge to share ANY it here at all. It just seems like too much effort and too much time taken up to do it.  *sigh*

So what to do?  Do I shut it down, delete, move on and forget about it?  Do I make an effort for whatever reason to plough on?  Do I do it differently so it doesn't eat into my time so much?  Do I NOT make a decision about what to do at all? 

Go with the flow.
See what happens.
Maybe get around to it or not.

Not give a shit either way because in the big scheme of things it's only a blog?

It is not cumpulsary.
It is not an obligation.
It shouldn't be another chore on life's long list of chores.

Presently and for a while it has been a chore.  Something I feel I have been neglecting willfully and with no guilt whatsover if I am honest but I wonder, should I put it to bed and let it sleep an endless sleep or revive it.

I am glad to say I do not have to answer.

X

I love lemons....

 ...what can I say?

My laptop adapter went to heaven and being forced on to the family pc for a few days showed up that on a bigger brighter screen, well the background was minging.  Perish the thought that this is the version of my blog any of you may have seen! 

It matters......

Aesthetics do matter.  

What it says about me matters.

I do not want to be minging.

I want to be like lemons; not the screwy face pulling and sour but bright and yellow and sunshiney and good with cake.

Like well hung wallpaper; something interesting to look at behind the photo frames and furniture.

Maybe a bit overpowering and loud?  It wouldn't be the first time I'd be called that...

I may well tire of it soon enough but for now....who's for a squeeze of ma lemon?  

Excuse me now while I ponder the Rock God of all Rock Gods that is the young Robert Plant for whose request,as I have said before here, to squeeze his lemon has me all but on the floor begging for a time machine to do just that.    

I wonder....a post about the could be erotic adventures if I had a time machine.  There would be a list.  Who's curious???

X

It's most definitely unusual...

...for me to have absolutely nothing to say but alas that is how it has been.  

For weeks now when I think of my ickle blog, I realize, sure enough absolutely nothing to say.  

I've lots I could talk about.....organizing and decorating instead of intended camping trip over the hols - boring but necessary if I want a craft room this year.  Easter family celebrations at my in-laws and accidentally getting very drunk, had to send myself off to bed very early for me to ward off the chance of vomit. Hubby did not let it lie at all, for days.  I'm too old and obviously a shandy lightweight when it comes to afternoon to evening drinking!!!  

Eldest Biscuit's 10th birthday - how can a decade pass so fast?.  Youngest Biscuit loosing his top two teeth in the same weekend - who knew he could get any more cute?  Painful orthodontist visits (is there any other type?) - at least one more year to go thanks to waiting a year and a half for minor surgery.  Sitting in the garden reading.  Watching Masterchef - I couldn't bear Tom and Sarah not winning too.  Losing my making mojo only to find it briefly and sporadically only to lose it again and again - effing HATE that. Watching E.T for the first time in a long long time - laughing at the blonde wig and hat and crying (you know when).  Being terrified by The Silence in Doctor Who.  Remembering again why Mr Biscuit is most definitely the best man in the universe for me.

Making plans, always making plans - holidays, garden, alfresco eating, quilts, my 'running away from the menfolk' craft room.   
Ooh and chocolate.

Maybe now I've said all that I can get back to blogging about pants.  Intrigued, are you not??

X

Sometimes...

As a teenager in my parents house I loved to re-arrange all the furniture in my bedroom every now and again.  I loved that feeling of taking the familiar and making it fresh and new.  That room was the small part of the world (and the house) that belonged to me.  Where I could escape, think, marinade in teenage melancholy, frustration and angst.  Where I could play with my sewing machine, read, write stories, listen to music and be left to be.

Sometimes you simply feel like a change.  

Sometimes you feel that old arrangement simply doesn't suit you anymore.  

Sometimes you find a new way of doing something so that something feels re-energized.

Sometimes you simply need to tweak your 'space' to make it feel spacious once again.

X

Seeing black and feeling blue!

I'm fed up!

I'm fed up with feeling fed up!

Week three and I'm still poorly and it's starting to eat into me now.  Really starting to get me down, not sleeping well, no energy and so, so tired.  As Hubby Biscuit always says "I'm keeping it till it gets better" and I am looking after myself but impatience, hormones and a general lack of understanding as to why this b*****d cold will not go away are draining me.  

I'm feeling blue, finding it hard to see the positive thus seeing black and feeling affected by the rain and the lack of sun.

One of the reasons, if not the reason I started this blog was the idea of pulling my thoughts out of me and feeling the catharsis that brings.  I wrote a journal for years.  Books and books filled with ink;  my thoughts, feelings, ideas, my history and yet it stopped, stopped when the weight of motherhood caused such repetition I didn't want to listen to myself anymore.  

It was no longer cathartic discussing my life, life simply was what it was.  

After staring reading blogs I started to see blogging could open that door again so I tentatively began. I felt more freedom in my life and found a platform so here I am using that platform, putting it out there that I feel pants and saying (writing) that out loud and pulling it out of me helps just a little. Helps enough to motivate me enough to keep going and do the things I need to do today.  

Helps enough to know putting The Smiths on my ipod will put me over the edge so I won't be doing that then!

Ooh and my Doctor Who DVD may come today!  See, a positive thought! 

X

No longer a clown....that's a matter of opinion!

It's week two of this awful cold I am experiencing and yes my face has sooked itself back up (as much as a 37 year old face can), my nose is no longer as red as a clown's nose or Rudolph's for that matter.  My house is no longer covered in ickle mounds of used tissues and I am no longer sneezing and spitting (that includes food, I know MINGING!!) all over myself.  

I am however facing the truth that I do not sound sexy and husky and all Mariella Frostrup but like I am crying all the time which is embarrassing when phoning school offices and hospitals to cancel orthodontic appointments.  I am blessed, for the first time in nine years, in being able to be ill and in my jim-jams for days on end as my lovely Biscuits have been taking themselves off to school in the morning.  I have been able, for the most part, to stop dead in it's tracks the dreaded 'Mum' law that seems to state we must keep going no matter what or how ill we get.  I was poorly this time last year and 'kept going' and was still not right at Christmas time so this year, thanks to my Biscuits, I have been resting lots, watched lots of films and thankfully (after only one week of wearing a bandage although I'm not going to get into how bad that week was..ooh the pain!!) have been able to knit and crochet again.  

So I am not dwelling on how little I have been getting done or how sick I am being poorly or how I am going ever so slightly mad cooped up in the house but grateful I am getting to have sick days and blessing the invention of Jakemans Soothing Menthol Sweets.   
I have missed some posts I was planning, namely celebrating this...

...the first birthday of my blog.  My lovely wee blog that has enabled me, for the first time in years, to feel more like me.  Not just Mum and Wife and Housekeeper but silly old clown-like me.  I have 'met' a hopeful, 'restores your faith in mankind', large mixing bowl amount of fantastic people and can not get enough of being reminded how similar we all are and I am not alone in my existential thoughts (forever the Philosophy student).  If I am being honest I thought, in my usual way, I'd get bored with it after a bit but no, a year on I'm still really enjoying it.  So thanks peeps for reading!

Here's to another year!

X