Crafting, Cheesecake, and Moustaches

It's been a very busy few days for me- on Wednesday I found out I had a job interview for this morning, which included a ten minute presentation. Aside from interview prep, lots of lovely things have happened:

1. My friend Cazz came round for dinner on Wednesday night and brought the most amazing cheesecaked I've eaten in ages. Seriously delicious, and full of amazing blueberry jam. Combined with the blackcurrant topping I'm pretty sure the massive chunk I scoffed counted as one of my 5-a-day.
   
   

   

   Wild Blueberry & Blackcurrant Cheesecake- practically a fruit salad!

   
   
2. I spent Friday night at my friend Charlie's house; drinking cocktails, admiring her many patchwork blankets (which you can purchase if you ask very nicely!) and trying to contain my broodiness after spending time with her beautiful 14-month daughter, who has the biggest Bambi eyes I've ever seen! Also, she's the only person I've ever met who can make covering her face in bits of bread and plum look cute.
   
   
3. After showing Charlie a picture of my House cross-stitch, now finished, she's commissioned me to make her one of her own (as has Doll Doll Dolly- everyone's feeling the Hugh Laurie love), plus five or six others for personal appreciation and Christmas presents. 
   
   
   
   

   

   Finished "Bless This House" cross-stitch

   I need to hurry up and get my stitch on if they're going to be done in time! Luckily I've got plenty of threads to keep my fingers busy on these commissions, after I found this bargain set of 150 skeins for £20 from Argos.
   
   
   

   

   Ooh! Lookit! Lots of lovely threads.

   
   
4. My craft room (which doubles as our dining room) is coming together brilliantly, after I managed to find The Perfect Dresser in our local charity furniture shop for a bargainous £85, which is now home to my ever-expanding fabric collection. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I particularly love that the hinges look like moustaches.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. I'm going to visit my parents in a few weeks time to trawl round their local furniture shops because they're much cheaper than the ones here- my Mum is constantly bringing home amazing antique pieces that cost her £3!!! I'm after a rectangular footstool so I can cover it to look like a custard cream, after finding this footstool on hunky dory home.
   
   
   

   
   
6. I'm feeling very inspired to step up my crafting after Fran lent me her Mollie Makes magazines- I can't stop flicking through them to drool over the pictures of beautiful crafty homes. When I get the chance between cross-stitch commissions and making over my furniture I'm going to make some pretty paper swallows for my wall, and a floral pin-board so I've got somewhere to stick up inspiring pictures and tutorials I want to try. I'll most likely use Fran's easy-to-follow memo-board tutorial to get me started.
   
   
7. And finally, I went to Aldi today to buy some vegetarian wine*, and I forgot to take any ID with me. I'm pretty sure I looked so nervous due to ID-related worries I looked like a 17-year-old trying to buy some Lambrini. Very surprised the check-out guy didn't ID me as I looked so shifty. Perhaps he was afraid to in case I turned out to be even stranger than I appeared- I can't imagine they get many “normal” people buying two bottles of red, a bag of frozen peas, and a bottle of Advocaat at midday on a Monday... In my defence, I was buying the Advocaat because I want to try making Snowballs after seeing them on Nigella. And I just really like peas.

Any excuse for a pic of Nigella... Snowball cocktail far left.

*For those of you who didn't know; most wine isn't suitable for vegetarians because fish skins or gelatine are used during the fining process. Veggie wine can be tricky to find in most supermarkets, but for some unknown-yet-brilliant reason Aldi stock loads of different veggie wines for under £3.99 a bottle. Win.