Festive fun

Taking a breath this morning to take it all in. We've had a wonderful Christmas shared with our nearest and dearest. Admittedly eaten waaaaayyy too much and over indulged in a little too much alcohol but we've had a great time. I made Christmas dinner with the help of everyone and it was absolutely delicious, even attempted Nigella's glazed ham to go with our Turkey, I changed the black treacle to maple syrup and it was fantastic!!! 

We had 4 cats in the house, 3 of ours and my Mam and Stepdad brought their cat Gordon down too. Surprisingly they all got on fine. Everyone seemed to have a great time, lots of laughing and stories of Christmas's before.

Thankfully all my home-made gifts made it to their destinations in time for opening on Christmas day, they included: Cheese biscuits, gingerbread biscuits, chocolate shards, lemon curd, reindeer decorations, a wreath (which I totally forgot to take a photo of when finished - doh!!) and some other bits and bobs.

For the first time I treated myself to a bit of pampering and got some sparkly nails. 

We received some lovely gifts, I cant thank everyone enough. My crafty friends, you know who you are, thank you for your so thoughtful gifts xxx I am so very lucky!!!! 

All thats left to say is that I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends.

Now its time to relax and enjoy the time off before going back to work in the new year. xxx

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Having more time to myself in the run up to Christmas has meant that I've been able to do some of the things I'd always wished I had time for. We normally have a real wreath for the front door but this year I wanted make a fake one that we could use year after year. I wanted to keep it simple with Holly and berries, a few tiny gold baubles, and a gold hessian bow.

I also made this one for indoors it is hanging in our dining room. I added some little copper wire lights and a wired ribbon bow. 

The tree is up and looking very traditional, I have an eclectic collection of baubles but I try to stick to a red and green colour theme. 

The only thing left is to decorate the table. I have no idea exactly what I'm going for this year but I have some bits and bobs and I've been searching for ideas on Pintrest. Just need to put it all together.

My favourite cake to date!

Home-made Cappuccino cake

I've been spending a lot of time since changing my eating habits looking for recipes so that I can enjoy some treats that I can cook from scratch so I know exactly what is in them. I've realised that no one should really eat processed food, we have no idea what's in it half the time. 

On my search I've been trying to fill my recipe book up with lots of different dishes, one of them being this delicious Cappuccino cake. Its one of the easiest cakes I've made and was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. I love coffee......so a perfect choice for me :)

I also made this cake for a charity Bake sale at work and it went down a treat!!! 

Let me know if you would like me to post the recipe and I'll add a tab at the top. 

Definitely my most favourite cake to date!

Feeling festive

So this started off the feeling festive bug......

So then I listed all of these in my Etsy shop.....

Which then led to lots of little ginger cuties globe-trotting their little sugared socks off :D

Lorraine Pascale and my Kmix win!!

I am a huge fan of celebrity chef Lorraine Pascale, I've followed her from her early days creating delicious deserts and cakes on TV and was gutted I never got to visit her cupcake shop in London before it closed. 

I love her new healthy eating lifestyle and following her on Instagram and you tube has really motivated me to be healthier and more active. 

Amongst posting delicious recipes and fitness tips Lorraine also gives away some fantastic items from her sponsors. Every time, I have entered in the hope of winning and two weeks ago I did just that!!!! I won!!!! And what a prize I won too, a brand new Kenwood Kmix mixer. I couldn't believe it. I'd had a pretty crappy day so to find out I had won really made my day. 

Lorraine is so lovely, I messaged her straight back to say thank you and she replied and even said hi to my Dad too :) 

Can't wait to give it a whirl and make some cakes with it. At the moment it is sitting pretty on my kitchen bench and very pretty it looks indeed! 

Spppoooookkkyy!!

OK well here I am again, playing that age old game of blog catch up. This is what you get when you can never find anything to blog about and then low and behold it all comes at once. If there was ever an award for sporadic blogging I'd be right up at the top. 

So please excuse the fact that this post is from Halloween, if you are a follower of Instagram then you will have already seen these photos. I've always been a huge fan of Halloween, mainly because I like a damn good excuse for decorating the house and behaving like a 10 year old all over again.

We did our best to make the front of the house as spooky looking as we could and it has vastly improved from last years efforts. Mr. B added the red light to make it look a bit more sinister, but I was worried we would be giving people the wrong impression of what we were offering ha ha ha. Maybe a red light would have been better if it were green :D

I cant take any praise for this years pumpkin as Mr.B took care of it. Didn't he do a grand job of it. I covered the huge log with cobwebs and added a tarantula....we also had a flashing "BEWARE" sign on our gate but I couldn't  get a good photograph of it. 

We had quite a few children from the village on the hunt for treats and they had all made a fantastic effort of dressing up. We let Mr. Pumpkin head burn right throughout the night and reluctantly decided to put him in the bin 4days later. I did however roast the pumpkin seeds on the afternoon and they were delicious. I'd never thought about roasting them before but noticed that quite a few people in blog land were doing it so I thought why not give it a go!! 

I'll post the easy instructions at some point if you're interested?

Moving forward....

So this time last year this was me....this was my life.

I was engrossed in making gorgeous creations like the below, I loved it and relished in the fact that when it suited me I could turn out pretty much whatever I wanted or a customer commissioned. I cant tell you how much I love/d to make bags, its something that just felt right and never felt like work....ever!

I started Bagladee because I loved to make bags, it was that simple. I was very lucky to be able to do this, I was/am still working full time in a very demanding job, along side moving to a new house and still in the process of "putting our stamp on it". I was starting to feel stressed and anxious about the smallest of things and couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong. A close friend of mine suggested maybe I was putting too much pressure on myself and maybe it was time I give myself a break. I pondered on it for quite sometime, in fact I think it quite possibly could have been months. One day it just clicked and I decided it was time to just hang up my bag making apron and make a new plan.

It was tough at first, I had my new list of priorities, but I was still seeing all my crafty friends posting about all the gorgeous things they had made and it made me feel sad that I wasn't creating too. That was until I put my plan into action.  

 So at the end of July, I pressed pause on Bagladee and pressed play on what you could say "me".  So this is me now.....kick started my new healthy life style, eating healthier, exercising, I've lost a stone in weight and feel so much better in myself. We took a holiday, the first in 5 year, spent a lot of time with Mr.B, spent quite a lot of time making our home as beautiful as our creative skills will allow and I have found out I really love to be in our kitchen. I'm learning to cook more from scratch, making meals healthier and getting as much fruit and veg as I can.

I love all aspects of my life, past and present and have never regretted any decision I've made as I've always gone with gut instinct. Its all a learning curve right? Isn't that why we're all here, to experience as much as we can in life. There have been tough times too but I'm a firm believer in that bad times help us appreciate the good times.

Slowly I'm getting back into a little sewing, I've stocked my Etsy and Folksy shops with some decorations and maybe I'll get round to making a bag or something soon. But for now, watch out for some homemade cakes, soups and breads....Oh yes and some lemon curd too :D