Catching up - Travels, Friends, Collections, Art...

Hiya, hope those of you to whom half term means anything - whether kids at home or time off work - have had a good one. We had a couple of days in Brighton, or 'Hove, actually' as the bit we stayed in is generally known, and I'm finally beginning to thaw out. When will we ever learn that February half term is NOT the time to attempt to do family mini-breaks? Still, the Siberian snow flurries coming off the sea-front did give us an ideal excuse to spend a lot of time in our favourite galleries and to make regular cake stops at cafes, which is always enjoyable, and we got to spend some time with our nieces. We took the kids to the Sea Life Centre, which is fun - although given that it's housed in a subterranean Victorian arcade - also chilly. I refused to take my gloves off for long enough to take more than a few snaps of Brighton on  my phone - not particularly surprisingly they all fall into my regular subject categories of street art, cake, and random things which strike me as amusing:

Tape Butterflies outside ArtRepublic gallery by Cassette Lord

More Cassette Lord work near Hove Station

Most of the junction boxes have been decorated by him

{with the council's OK}

Mmm yeah Tea - by Sinna 1

Chocolate sculpture in the window of Choccywoccydoodah

Desiree is that you?

Obey Mr Grey - wedding?? - cake in window of shop in North Laine

Imagine having to explain the theme to your Grandma

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Insane poodle trainers - not by Irregular Choice, but...Adidas!

Krista - what do you think? Tempted?

Speaking of pink haired princesses, I recently met up with the divine Miss Simmonds for a little jaunt round Camden, which mainly involved gossiping, trying on hats, chatting to knicker makers, buying sunglasses - it was pissing down, obviously, but a trip to Camden without buying shades is no trip at all - and a bit of charity shopping. It was less freezing, and I occasionally remembered to get my camera out.

None of these is Clare

Here she is, next to her faithful steed

Glamorous pants, made by 

Coy. Don't you just love her sparkly lurex frock?

Pretty in Pink in Traid changing rooms

This would have been a great dress if it weren't for all the holes. I think if you're going to try and charge £17 for a second hand home-made garment the shop should at least attempt to mend the several places where it was coming apart at the seams. Unfortunate because it went really well with her hair.

In addition to the cheapy sunglasses I bought some skull print jeans to add some interest to my school run wardrobe, a felt hat from Zara via charity shop for a fiver and a turquoise leopard print vest also from a charity shop. Turquoise and leopard as a combination appeals to me almost as much as the scarf I bought in Brighton - purple! With skulls! Made of flowers! Shame it's polyester chiffon and not particularly warm. I continue to suffer for the sake of rock and roll. 

See, I DO like florals...

Anyway, I don't have photos of this more recent stuff but I have been adding absent-mindedly to a few collections recently so I will link this post up to Magpie Monday - it's been too long. I've got another annual to add to the shelf - a boys' one this time - it's not dated but I think it's late 40s or early 50s, and I also grabbed this mint condition Folio Society copy of The Wind in the Willows for only £2. I'm reading J K Rowling's recent novel for grown-ups (calling it her first adult novel makes it sound like porn) 'The Casual Vacancy' and am quite enjoying it. I didn't fancy paying £20 for it when it came out, despite being a fan of Harry Potter, but £2.50 for the hardback in the Scope shop made it more reasonable. Has anyone read it? What did you think? I must admit to being mildly amused that the central deceased character is called Barry. She must have really cast around for that name!

The Eagle Annual has a story set in futuristic 1997, where dashing space rangers have to do an intergalactic Christmas pudding run!

I bought the poseable artist's figure in a local charity shop, and the Czech glass bud vase from a junk shop. I have about 12 now, I just seem to come across them and they're always cheap. The coloured glass bubble bases look really pretty in the sunshine but a lot you see have stains on the plain glass caused by hard water evaporating. I've tried lots of methods of getting rid of this but haven't found a way yet. The red-headed ladies prints are greetings cards made by Anna at Gold Lion Diaries - she kindly included them free when I bought a print for Boy2's room from her Etsy shop. Nice aren't they? I keep meaning to look out for some little frames for them.

I could have bought loads of art when I was in Brighton, spending time in galleries or museums always makes me covetous. I'd quite like Justine Smith's 'Time is Money', if anyone has a spare grand and a half and fancies getting me a present.

 It's made of the bank notes of each country's currency and looks far better in reality

I've said it before, but I used to really enjoy art at school, I'd love to get back into it. Much as I enjoyed my English lit course, Clare's talk about art college makes it sound a lot of fun, and seeing all the modern/street inspired art at my favourite gallery Art Republic makes me yearn for a big studio, lots of canvas and some spray paint to play with. Mind you, whenever I go to the Tate Modern I'm convinced I can make my fortune with some shop window dummies, old planks and parcel tape so it's entirely possible I am delusional.

Finally my cookie cutter collection has expanded again with these few I couldn't resist on eBay. The owl, spider and er, poodle made an unusual Halloween threesome for a few quid, and I have decorating plans for the martini glass. A triangle of coloured icing and one of those little jelly lemon slices and I reckon the biscuits will look brilliant. [I counted up my collection the other day after making the polar bear biscuits and it now numbers around 80 if you include scone cutters.]

On the subject of cookies, here's some of the ones I made for my boys for Valentine's day - the bra and thong only made it into a grown-up lunch box though, don't worry!

Well I seem to have rambled on for ages, so that should probably do for now. I'll be back tomorrow for Ta-dah! Tuesday, so get ready to link up any finds/makes/bakes/outfits etc that you want to show off!

Lakota x

PS. There are loads of comments I've had recently that I wanted to reply to but I'm still being deluged with spam which Blogger's filter isn't picking up so it's getting hard to pick out the genuine replies. Is anyone else suffering? I really don't want to turn word  verification on.

Ta-dah! Tuesday - Polar Bear Biscuits

My parents just came back from their holidays - a ferry round Norway and up to the Arctic circle, where they were lucky enough to see the Northern Lights. Now I'm very jealous of this experience, but was slightly mollified to be given this polar bear cookie cutter on their return. I didn't exactly set out to collect cookie cutters - I just began buying them in shapes I knew my boys would enjoy, but then I started to get lucky about finding them in charity shops [remember the giant crab?] and have fully embraced it.They're very satisfying to collect - cheap, cute, come in many many different shapes and sizes and of course give you the perfect excuse to make and eat biscuits. I like the metal ones best, but why not raid the kids' play-doh cutters if they have some good shapes? Domestic Goddess and general smut-miester Nigella Lawson has a collection too, and whilst it is way larger than mine - the list she proudly gives in her book Feast does not include a polar bear. [Or a squirrel. Ha! Take that Nigella]

Anyway, you may remember that I mentioned wanting to learn to make proper iced biscuits - made famous by the company Biscuiteers, stocked in Harrods, Liberty and Fortnum & Mason and wildly expensive to buy ready made. Well, given that polar bears are white and that would mean no messing about with food colourings, I figured this cutter would give me the perfect excuse to practise. And who doesn't love polar bears?

[Now imagine if you will a period of time not unlike another ice-age. Glaciers slowly carving out new valleys. Civilisations rising and falling etc etc]

Ahem. Some hours later - and with copious amounts of royal icing now welded to our slate kitchen tiles - I had finally managed to knock up a fairly respectable batch of polar bears. Some of them may look a little more sheeplike than the mighty hunter of the frozen North technically should, but I didn't think it was bad for a first attempt. I also now have a new appreciation for why the damn things are so expensive, given how long I was wrestling with an icing bag. [The cookies themselves take no time, and you could of course just slosh some regular glacé icing on and be done in minutes]

Ta-dah!

I used Nigella's recipe for cut-out cookies, which I will reproduce here, as I believe it's all over the net anyway. I used royal icing sugar for the icing, which means you don't have to mess about beating egg whites and so on.

Polar Bear Biscuits
90g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
1 egg (Nigella says large but I used medium and it was fine)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.
200g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

• Cream the butter and sugar together til moussey looking (use a mixer, I do), then add the egg and vanilla extract and beat together. 
• Mix the dry ingredients together in another bowl, then add to the mixture until combined. 
• Squish the dough together into a fat disc, wrap in cling-film and allow to rest in the fridge for an hour.  
• Roll out to about 0.5cm thick on a floured surface and cut out your polar bears.
• Arrange on baking trays lined with greaseproof. They keep their shape well - important for this kind of biscuit - so you can put them fairly close together as long as they're not touching.
• Cook in pre-heated 180c oven for around 10-12mins until they are just beginning to go golden around the edges.
• Cool on wire racks.

When they're cool, you need to make a piping consistency royal icing to outline the bears with, and let this dry for 10 minutes or so before 'flooding' with runnier royal icing. I'm not sure I got the consistency quite right and had to push a lot of it around with the end of a spoon to fill in the gaps. Oh well, Valentine's day coming up - more practise required! I drew their little faces on using one of those pre-filled writing icing tubes. Not the easiest things to use, despite what the packaging would have you believe.

What have you been up to?

Lakota x

ps. Don't forget the giveaway here

Crabby

Cookie cutters are great aren't they? Well, some are. Some are just a bit rubbish. I found this random selection in a charity shop a few weeks ago - yes, I know I already bought a load here, but I can't help myself, they call to me - however to be honest they're a bit of a mixed bag.

Hmm, lets see shall we? Heart - yes, yes very pretty, have several already, should have no excuse not to be presenting my loved ones with intricately decorated tokens of adoration on a daily basis, in practise make an appearance once a year for Valentine's day. This Christmas they are all being rounded up, having gingham ribbon tied round them, and being used as shabby chic decorations on the tree. Cox and Cox or RE: would probably charge a fortune for 'vintage upcycled ornaments' like that. Bell and Snowman, so far so seasonal. I have a feeling that once baked the snowman is going to look more like the Yuletide cello - the proof will be in the festive pudding. Egg has great potential for garish decoration with dolly mixtures at Easter despite its boringly functional shape, so also a keeper. The flat-footed rabbit and chick wearing Alexa Chung's brogues can keep it company.

At the top you'll see what I excitedly decided was a vampire bat - look at him dramatically swooping above the heart - but have sadly come to realise is in fact another member of the really crap dinosaur gang on the right. Aren't they hopeless? Boy1 went through an exhaustive and exhausting dinosaur phase a couple of years ago so I already have a set of prehistoric pals - far better and more terrifying than this shower, whom I only really identified because of the brontosaurus, which seemed more likely than manta-ray. Or mis-shapen orang-utan. Turn the 'bat' right way up and he's supposed to be a stegosaurus, although it could pass as a porcupine. The T-Rex looks more like a parrot, and God only knows what the other one is meant to represent. Boy1 suggested a chasmosaurus, and I bow to his superior knowledge. Anyway, if anyone wants the dino trio let me know - bat boy has had species re-assignment and is staying with mama for Halloween.

£1.95 for the above would have been a little disappointing if it hadn't been for the awesomeness below - the jewel in the crown of my cookie cutter collection so far. Ladies and gentlemen - I give you...the CRAB.

Mmm, crab cookies. Nom [as people inexplicably say these days]

Look at his mighty pincers! Now that's a cookie cutter. Perfect for grumpy old neighbours, Cancerian birthdays and meetings of the local STD clinic. And it has come all the way from the US of A, with Ann Clark's Crab Cookies recipe still tied to it. Of course, if I ever get round to dressing either of the kids up like this, they'll be the perfect accompaniment! I've not read my horoscope, but I predict an afternoon of crustacean based baking coming up very soon!

Over and out, crab fans!

Lakota x

Linking up again to Magpie Monday

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Don't judge a tin by its, erm, lid?

Hello, and welcome to my 50th post! [Yes, I know it took me a while. That's me]. It also seems like a while since I've found a decent bargain in a charity shop, and I nearly missed this not particularly attractive biscuit tin on the shelf. I'm glad I didn't though, as it was full to the brim with cookie cutters and all sorts of cake decorating paraphernalia.

I seem to be developing a large collection of cookie cutters, and this tin enabled me to add to my gingerbread man army, including a teeny-weeny Mr and Mrs pair only a few centimetres high. I can also now make gingerbread pigs, should I so desire. [I do, obviously]. I think the tong-y things are for crimping icing. It makes me happy to know that if any icing ever needs crimping, I'm all set.

There was also a mini heart shaped cake tin, and over twenty icing nozzles of different sizes, some of which appeared to be really old.

I know that these plastic things are icing cutters for making leaves and flowers, and that the dangerously large thumb tack is called an icing pin, but I have no idea how you'd go about using it. I'm also clueless about the metal hoop, and the yellow tools which look suspiciously like medical instruments, possibly for ear-wax removal. Any domestic goddesses of the cake persuasion who can shed some light? Perhaps I should actually read the 1981 copy of Cake Icing and Decorating by Carole Handslip which I picked up for 75p a few months before. I do wonder if the tin was later donated by the same disillusioned baker...

                          

The contents of the whole tin was £1.50, and having looked on a couple of sugarcraft websites, I've discovered that just a single icing nozzle can cost up to £2.50. There were 22 in there, plus 10 cookie cutters and all the other bits and pieces. So I'm declaring it a bargain!

 I'd also like to say hello to all my new followers - hurrah to reaching 200 - and thanks again to everyone who follows and especially those who comment, I really appreciate it and am amazed the blog has got this far in 4 months. I'm constantly inspired by so many of your blogs - and I've been challenged to do an outfit post. We'll see!* And I can't wait for the great charity shop swap.

Finally, if you follow - you've got a great chance of winning one of my giveaways. Do enter my Plum and Ivory giveway if you're in the UK, and the Trashion Magazine competition is open worldwide.

Lakota x

* Did I sound jauntily nonchalant there? I'm terrified.

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