A rather magical weekend

Hey m'dears!

How have you been?

I felt so relaxed after my week off I was practically floating on a cartoon cloud. I did everything I'd hoped to do and so much more. I also ate an excessive number of carbohydrates, which I'm pretty sure is what people are referring to when they use the phrase "living the dream".

Me, enthusiastically slicing carbs. Hurrah!

My outing to London Zoo on Friday far exceeded my expectations (admittedly, I was mainly expecting to fall asleep in front of the monkeys). I don't know if it was the company (charming), the caffeine (delicious), or the animals (awesome) but I was still partying 23 hours after my 2am wake-up call. And by "partying" I mean "drinking pre-made mojitos in the park", because I'm all class.

Thankfully, being up that early gave me plenty of time to research hipster coffee haunts, and The Coffee Jar more than delivered in the form of totally kick-arse white chocolate and hazelnut cookies:

I spotted all kinds of weird and wonderful critters on our way round, topped off by being INCREDIBLY brave during the Spider Walk (i.e. being put in a room with a whole bunch of BLOODY MASSIVE SPIDERS who were completely free to move around and/or jump in your face, and managing not to cry). I definitely earned the ice-cream I scoffed afterwards, and I'm pretty sure shaking from fear burns calories too.

HUUUUUGE moth. These things were so vast we all thought they were fake. Nope.

The Lesser Striped Upside-Down Bird*

Couldn't spot this guy, so I assumed that he was hiding from fish school name-taunting bullies

Although, my favourite sight of the entire day had to be this:

As for last weekend, it was literally magical, because I got to attend a Harry Potter themed Hen Do. Most of the magic was organised (fantastically!) by the Hen's sister; including HP themed goody bags, surprise boxes of (gluten free) baked goods, and amazing activities- a delicious dinner, pottery painting, and drinking so many cocktails that some girls' stomachs decided to expelliarmus their contents. Does that make throwing up sound more or less gross!?

My contribution to the weekend's agenda was a Potter-themed Scavenger Hunt, taking the Hens on a tour of Worthing and creating a legitimate excuse for some Hen Do-themed hashtags. Double win.  

Each team had an illustrated list of things to find and photograph:

The pottery painting may well have been my favourite part of the weekend, and I think it's fair to say the owner of Art-Ful is my (much cooler) kindred spirit:

Batman, Lichtenstein, incredible fonts...

... AND FAKE DEER HEADS.

This was my super-sophisticated contribution; I can't wait to get this bad boy home and full of amaretto sours.

Finally, despite seeing ocarpis, glow-in-the-dark beetles, and a man who looked like Dumbledore over the weekend, the weirdest thing I spotted has to be just how freakily disproportionate my thumb is to, well, everything else in the world. How could I never have noticed that before?!?



Seriously- have you ever seen a bigger thumb (excluding foam ones at baseball games)?!

Katie xxx

* OK, OK I made that name up. I never said I was David Attenborough**.

** I wish I was David Attenborough.

Six Things Sunday

Hello my lovelies!

How have your weekends been? Mine's involved cocktails, fancy dress, fresh-from-the-oven French pastries, and five hours(!) of gardening (to counteract the pastries). It's been the icing on the cake of a really good week, which also included these six fantastic things:

1. New followers
*Waves and proffers packet of biscuits* Heartfelt greetings to those of you who've recently started following my ramblings! I feel honoured that you've decided to stick around, but I must warn you to prepare your eyes for lots of photographs like this:

All images from Kimberly Hamner's Pinterest board. I feel like Kimberly and I would get on rather well... Unless we actually met Jo Manganiello. Then we'd probably fight to the death.

2. Unexpected presents
I would like to think that I always treated my polkadot satchel with the utmost dignity and respect, but apparently that wasn't enough; the strap broke last week and managed to whip me across the face in the process. Needless to say, I was very relieved that the buckle wasn't still attached to the end of it! 

Being able to use my gorgeous new weekend bag as a replacement handbag has prevented me from becoming inconsolable about the breakage, but it's still a rather sad day when your accessories start assaulting you! After I shared my woes with Anna, as a fellow polkadot satchel owner, she very sweetly decided to send me a present to cheer me up! I was so excited to find out what she'd sent me, which turned out to be this gorgeous clasp purse:

The best thing about this purse (besides being absolutely beautiful) is that it has two compartments; so I can separate the ID for my second, secret identity my cards and cash. Genius! Thank you so much Anna xxx

3. Mini Godzilla
My personal highlight of the Lego Movie was discovering the existence of LEGO GODZILLA!!! Technically, he's Lego Lizard Man; but it's basically the same thing. I might have tracked down and bought a figure online before the movie had even finished... 

Lego Godzilla now lives inside the glass dome with my metal tealight house - I like the juxtaposition of tiny Godzilla and giant building. 

4. Fancy chairs
Whilst visiting Eastbourne for work on Thursday, I spotted this rather unusual chair in the window of Barley Sugar: 

It's rather pricey, at three thousand English pounds(!), and I'm not sure how comfortable it would be with those tassels, but I reckon sitting in it equates with starring in the final scene of An Officer and a Gentleman. And it would probably cost a lot more than £3,000 to hire Richard Gere to carry you around your living room....

5. Marzipan moggies
Friday night was my bestie's birthday party, and I decided to sculpt miniature models of her cats out of marzipan to go on her birthday cake. This is the second time I've made Fran marzipan sweets, but I'll admit I was unsure how she'd feel about devouring her cats - even if they were almondy and delicious.

6. Treasure hunts
Rather than just handing over Fran's birthday presents, I decided to create a treasure hunt, complete with rhyming clues (I do love a bit of rhyme). I've included one below in case you fancy leaving a comment with a guess of what the gift was/where I hid it:

I'm squirrelled away with my brothers and sisters

We take you on journeys, without fear of blisters

Some of us wear jackets, but we don't have faces

I'll inspire you to travel to faraway places.

I'm linking up again with the fabulous Hannah's The Week That Was: Captured, and would heartily recommend it; Hannah is a very gracious hostess!

What fun things have you discovered recently?

Katie xxx

Party Time

Hey m'dears :)

Did the Easter bunny bring you lots of chocolatey goodness?

Our house is practically bursting at the seams, as are my jeans, due to both me and the house being stuffed to the brim with Easter eggs, leftover birthday cakes, more Easter eggs, jars full of M&Ms (Regular, not Emergency) and did I mention the Easter eggs? 

I decided to hold a little get-together yesterday as a pre-birthday celebration because I figured it was the perfect opportunity to combine four of my favourite things- cake, friends, treasure hunting and chocolate. Essentially, my dream job is to be a pirate who also owns a bakery. We organised an Easter egg hunt around the house and garden (although the garden eggs had to be hastily rescued and re-hidden indoors due to a sudden flurry of snow)- which was a rather sneaky request on my part because I like finding the un-discovered eggs during the week after the egg hunt whilst cleaning the house. To be honest, I think our house would be a lot cleaner if Tom promised to start hiding chocolate around the house once a week. 

I spent the morning in the kitchen whipping up some baked goodies. I decided to try amalgamating my signature lemon meringue cupcakes with my rainbow cupcakes, and dyed the lemony batter blue, green, red, yellow and lilac before dropping it into glass ramekins with the lemon curd and smothering it in fluffy white meringue. We had to eat them with spoons, but I think the effect was worth it. 

Rainbow lemon meringue cakes- before and after topping

For my main birthday cake I decided to attempt something I'd spotted on Pinterest and been reminded about after seeing Floral and Feather's version. The base cake choice for this can be anything you like, so I opted to try out the Divine Chocolate Birthday Cake recipe from my recently gifted copy of Mary Berry's Baking Bible. It's a flourless cake with ground almonds and a LOT of plain chocolate forming the cake and then a lot more chocolate for the icing. It was basically already a coronary on a plate before I started getting creative with the Kit Kats... Ah well. This is what I ended up with:

Ingredients:
To make this cake you will need*...
- a large cake of your choice
- lots of Kit Kats in whatever flavour you like- I went for milk chocolate
- M&Ms of your choice. I used three family sized bags of peanut M&Ms, for their Eastery shape
- chocolate icing to stick the Kit Kats to the cake. 

Method:

-Unwrap lots of Kit Kats from their foil before you spread the sides and top of cake with chocolate icing. 

- Start sticking the Kit Kats around the circumference of the cake. Feel pleased that it is going well. 

- Continue sticking Kit Kats around the edge in sections. Watch as the first ones you stuck on begin to fall off the cake and get chocolate icing everywhere. 

- Re-stick the first ones, whilst the next ones you stuck on start falling off the cake too. Do lots of swearing. 

- Wait for your boyfriend to come in to save you/see what all the swearing is about. Get really cross at him too for no good reason except that you have a sneaking suspicion gravity has somehow gotten worse since he came in to help. 

- Slap on loads more chocolate icing and re-adhere the Kit Kats, getting your boyfriend to hold them on whilst you complete the entire circle. Optional- shout something along the lines of "WHY am I even BOTHERING with this?! My whole birthday is basically RUINED!"

- Twist some silver foil into a long strip and use it to hold all the Kit Kats together around the cake whilst the icing sets. N.B. It's probably best to get the foil ready before you start decorating the cake, so you don't end up covering half the kitchen cupboards in chocolate icing whilst looking for the foil. 

- Take five minutes with a cup of tea to recover from your traumatic experience. 

- Once the icing has dried, replace the silver foil with a strip of ribbon, secured with double-sided sellotape, and fill the middle with M&Ms. 

- Stop being a she-Hulk, and apologise to your boyfriend for being such a cranky mare. Proffer the leftover icing as a much tastier olive branch. 

Ta-dah!

Despite the fact I'm a cranky mare who doesn't really deserve presents, I was still the recipient of a whole teetering pile of wonderful, thoughtful gifts- which I opened yesterday despite the fact it's not my birthday until Wednesday. Breaking ALL the Birthday Rules. 

My friend Holly has recently developed a crack-like addiction for porcelain paints and presented me with The Most Amazing Teapot In The Whole World, Ever, which she had decorated herself. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL? :)

Fran bought me a whole bunch of awesome goodies including an Operation pen(!!!), polar bear clips, egg cups, bird pegs (if these don't make doing the washing fun, I don't know what will), a gorgeous polka-dot teapot tea infuser, and a brooch from Designosaur! Eeeep! *does a happy dance*

My lovely friend Lucy bought me a gorgeous Katie Alice mug (modelled below with my new tea infuser), some amazing earrings shaped like owls and Day of the Dead skulls, and a square, tiered cake stand specifically for me to draw on with my porcelain pens. 

I am feeling like a very spoilt girl this weekend, and it's not even my birthday yet! And I've got half of the M&M cake leftover in the kitchen, along with a jar of back-up M&Ms to keep me going when that runs out. I think I might have to spend my birthday money on bigger jeans....

Katie xxx

* If you genuinely want the recipe I used for this cake, let me know in the comments section and I'll gladly send it to you. 

Advent Treasure Hunt - Weeks 3 & 4

That's it... The Advent Treasure Hunt is over. I can't believe Tom's managed to figure out all twenty four clues (and eat the majority of his presents!). You can see the clues and presents from Week 1 here and Week 2 here. But on the plus side, that means tomorrow is CHRISTMAS. 

Day 15

Clue - "Watch out for giant spiders"

Present - Lindt sea salt chocolate. I actually don't like this flavour, so Tom had a chance of getting stuck in first!

Day 16

Clue - "This gift is actually practical, and he has a wonderful bedside manner"

Present - Dinosaur rubber from Paperchase (I gave Tom the Iguanodon)

Day 17

Clue - "The future filling of many hootiful sandwiches"

Present - Bacon chilli jam. I had a feeling this was going to be a firm favourite, and as the jar is already nearly empty I'm assuming I was right :p I might have to buy Tom a whole crate of this for his birthday. 

Day 18

Clue - "Present 18 will hopefully be the source of many future tasty platefuls of dinner"

Present - Weird and wonderful Asian pickle-mustard thing. I have no idea what it is because I can't read the packaging! But Tom loves being a bit of a mad scientist in the kitchen, so he doesn't mind! :)

Day 19

Clue - "You'll be able to find present 19 hidden behind a blackout screen"

Present - Naga Napalm Onion Relish. Tom loves regular onion marmalade, and I tried making my own last year with relative success, but adding chilli to it has to be a winner! 

Day 20

Clue - "The site of yesterday's distress, I have a sinking feeling you won't find today's hiding place hard to guess!"

Present - Another unknown Asian chilli sauce thing. 

Day 21

Clue - "In the larder"

Present - Dumpling Sauce (Hot) (obviously). I've asked my little bro to get us a bamboo steamer kit for Christmas. Mostly because I want to try Jamie's Coconut Buns. Yum. 

Day 22

Clue - "A nice easy clue for present 22- find it quick so it doesn't start tasting like shoe!"

Present - Liberty Ale from the Anchor Brewing Company.

Day 23

Clue - "Second to last present- number 23; hidden where I first realised you were the one for me"

Present - Sussex beer mustard

Day 24

Clue - "I've run out of hiding places for present 24. So it's hidden very cunningly in the middle of the floor"

Present - Prickly Oil. Because it sounded hilarious and like something Eeyore would eat.

I certainly had a lot of fun putting this together for Tom; buying the presents, writing the clues, and watching him trying to figure them out. He seemed really happy with it too; although I have a feeling he thought I did this more for me than him, as every day I'd yell "DO YOUR ADVENT CALENDAR" as soon as he got in from work :p 

Roll on next Advent. I'm going to aim for more cryptic clues, and a wider range of presents (although Tom does really love his condiments!) Or maybe just 24 jars of Bacon Chilli Jam...

Katie xxx

Advent Treasure Hunt - Week 2

Two weeks into December, and a brand new set of Advent Calendar Treasure Hunt clues for Tom to solve... He did pretty well with Week 1, and I was excited to mix up this week's gifts a little bit more. Again, if you fancy having a guess in the comments section as to where I might've hidden any of these goodies, I will be awarding virtual mulled wine for correct answers. 

Day 8

Clue - "Present 8 often comes in a crate (although you've only got one- so don't get your hopes up)"

Present - A bottle of Anchor Porter, chosen purely because I loved the label. Thankfully it also tasted nice, apparently. 

Day 9

Clue - "I've mapped the location of present number 9, but you'll find it smartster; I know you'll be fine!"

Present - Champagne and Tarragon mustard. Our lovely local pub has jars of this to eat with their super-tasty Sunday roasts, and we've been trying to hunt down a stockist for ages to get some for Tom to have at home. I eventually found some in our local Waitrose. Hurrah!

Day 10

Clue - "Present number 10 has been squirrelled away- an emergency snack for a rainy day"

Present - Pleasure & Pain Venomous Naga Nuts from Scorchio

Day 11

Clue - "Present 11 is on the stairway to heaven (well, it leads to our new bathroom- which is pretty close!)"

Present - Another bottle chosen for it's label, this time Anchor Steam Beer

Day 12

Clue - "I wonder how quickly you'll clock present 12?"

Present - Lindt Caramel with a touch of Sea Salt chocolate bar. I've promised Tom this will be one of the few times he actually gets to eat "his" chocolate. Watch this space...

Day 13

Clue - "Present 13 is going to set fire to your mouth"

Present - this chilli sauce (in case you hadn't guessed, Tom loves chilli sauce more than he loves, well, anything that is not chilli sauce)

Day 14

Clue - "Present 14 is going to kick yo' ass to the moon!"

Present - Ass Kickin' Ketchup from Scorchio. Since discovering this, Tom has put it on everything from fry-ups to cheese on toast. 

Katie xxx

Advent Treasure Hunt - Week 1

One week into December, Tom has managed to solve seven devious Advent Calendar Treasure Hunt clues- like a beardy Miss Marple. The first week's worth of presents were all quite similar, as I didn't want the coffee beans going stale and I thought it would be cruel to make Tom wait longer than a few days to find all three parts of the Lego kit.

I've included the clues below so you call all take part in guessing where I hid them too (some of my clues are a lot easier than others; one of my future clues just says "Larder"...). Gold stars all round for any correct guesses :)

Day 1

Clue - "Present 1 is a pick-me-up to help you battle the daily grind; I've hidden it with the gadget you use to smash up others of it's kind"

Present - "Sumatra Blue Batak" coffee beans from the Whole Foods Market on Kensington High Street. 

I picked up several types of beans on my recent jaunt to London, and I was worried Tom would suss out I'd bought them as soon as I brought them home because even with them sealed in an old Quality Street tin there was the most deliciously overpowering smell of coffee.

Day 2

Clue - "In one of the places we store our clothes, you'll find something to make your chest hair grow(s)" - might've taken a few liberties with rhyming for this one.

Present - Ass Kickin' Roasted Garlic Hot Sauce from Tom's all-time favourite website Scorchio. 

Day 3

Clue - "Present number three is part of a (bis)kit; I can't give you the instructions yet because it will ruin it!"

Present - The motorbike kit part of this super-awesome Wolverine Lego Kit. (Which has gone on sale since I bought it... Dammit!) Anyway- it looks freakin' awesome, and the helicopter is meant to fire missiles or something....

Day 4

Clue - "Wake up and smell the... "

Present - "French Roast" coffee beans, again from Whole Foods Market. Can't remember the description; perhaps it tastes like sunburnt French people?

Day 5

Clue - "The second part of the mystery kit, Present 5 is hidden in the best kind of basket"

Present - The second part of the Wolverine Lego Kit.

Adorable Lego figure, and perfect excuse for gratuitous pic of Hugh Jackman....

Day 6

Clue - "Present 6 is on the same thread as Present 4" 

Present - The final bag of coffee beans - this time "Organic Bolivian"; with hints of spice and caramel (apparently)

Day 7

Clue - "Present 7 is the final part of the mystery kit; you'll find it and the instructions where the boys often sit"

Present - The final bag of bits for the Wolverine Helicopter. Tom spent yesterday afternoon making up the kit and he seems really happy with it :) Although I've warned him if I end up getting a helicopter missile in the eye, I will be confiscating it. Haha

Katie xxx