One day to go! And Quilt Project #1

Only one day to go until FLORIDA!! I am so excited to be going home to see MoMa. It feels like I haven't had a holiday in ages but really its only been since May. Two glorious weeks in the sun sounds amazing now that the Autumn word has been bandied about around here. If I wasn't going home I'd feel absolutely cheated by not having a real summer.

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I've been working on a quilt for awhile (well I got this much done and it's been sitting in a pile in my living room waiting to be completed) and I'm really liking how its coming along. As its my first quilt I chose I simple patchwork design inspired by this quilt. I have loads of squares cut out already but I've been sneaking in cross stitch projects between the quilt as I can sit on the couch while Billy watches football.

This will be for our bedroom as it is the only room that we don't actually like. It is really small so much so that Billy as to walk sideways around his side of the bed and we never really got around to decorating it as we focussed on the rest of the flat. I chose yellow and blue because they are not overly feminine yet I could still through some pretty patterns into it.

I bought most of my fabric as fat quarters, which in hindsight may not of been the best idea because I ran out of some of the fabrics. I have since bought and cut different fabrics to try and add to the mix. I hope to have this finished pretty soon after I get back from holiday and then I have to make curtains. I found this pretty cool material that's navy and a yellowy gold and very nautical. I would also love to make a headboard in a yellowy-goldish like this one here.

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Well I'm off now to finish packing! See y'all later.

Three weeks to go...

Three agonisingly long weeks are the only thing between me and my holiday! I have had a serious case of holidayitis for the past month as I've longed for sandy beaches instead of the rocky shores of England. It's actually quite nice as summer is winding down here in the UK and I'll get to go home and have two glorious weeks with Moma and maybe even a visit from my favourite friend Arielle from Atlanta!!

Billy and I will celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary while we are there and we have booked a hotel in Key West for a few days. Key West is my favourite spot in the whole of Florida because its so laid back but quite like a mini New Orleans. I love Ernest Hemmingway's house and how you are so close to Cuba but you'd have to fly to Canada to get there and I love the carcass of the original Flagler bridge eerily shadowing the seven-mile bridge.  Oh and did I mention the Key Lime Pie. You can get it on a stick there! And to top it off we are hoping to book a convertible to drive down in.

I have been stocking up of Florida friendly clothes for months as I can't stand wearing certain fabrics in the heat. I wear a lot of jersey as it is really soft on sun burned skin. I have bought a fedora to keep my face out of the sun and I found this adorable one piece honeycombed swimming costume apparently designed by Bettie Page (who lived in Key West for awhile so it was quite suiting- yes that was a bad pun). I also picked up another pair Bensimon Elastique tennis shoes which are essentially an integral part of my summer wardrobe as they are really comfy and slip on quick for spur of the moment bike rides. And they were on sale!! Score.

I have a few skirts and dresses I've acquired at various Gap sales the past few months as well so I'm pretty set. I really wanted some nice flip flops instead of the cheap plastic Old Navy ones I always seem to end up with.

I am seriously beyond excited and Billy and I are in desperate need of down time. Hurry up holiday.

100th Post!!

100th Post!!:
Wow I can't believe I'm writing my 100th post!  It actually feels like it should be more when I look back through my posts from the past few year, which I have been doing the past couple of days.  I started this blog when I was in a haze of anxiety from a job that literally gave me nightmares and this blog was a way to channel the good things in my life and gave me something to focus on. I blame this blog and my eagerness to add posts about baking for gaining twenty odd pounds, which I'm just now getting rid of. But I also am grateful for this blog for the creative outlet it provides. I learned to bake for catharsis, I was inspired to rediscover sewing and to immerse myself in new crafts that I had never the time or ambition to take on.

Catching up:
I have a lot of things to post now since I've been adding up my finished crafts. I haven't cook many new recipes as the past two months at work have been chaotic with the Queen's Jubilee and the Olympics and it's all I can do to whip up something quick. Billy has more time at home now that he isn't commuting into London everyday. We actually go for bike rides in the countryside after work now when he had been getting home at 8 or 9 o'clock at night only to wake back up for 5:30 at his last job. I'm still not eating meat, though I did have bacon for the first time a few weeks ago, which I thoroughly regretted. We still get our veg box weekly but now we get a smaller veg and additionally a small fruit supply that's quite refreshing in the summertime.

Summertime:
Speaking of summertime… On our afternoon bike rides in the English countryside I have been nostalgic for porches and lemonade. Its only now getting hot and it feels like summer is almost over and loads of blogs are already talking about Autumn!! NOOO NOT YET! I definitely think that summer is my favourite time of the year again (it ceased being my favourite season when i managed a firework store for many years whilst in my teens and I would work for two months straight without a day off for a meagre amount of money). But it really hasn't felt like summer. Its almost the end of July and I haven't gone strawberry picking yet and I'm reading the second in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series because I wanted to mindless summer book to get me in the mood! Billy and I are going home to Florida at the end of September, which also happens to coincide with our fourth wedding anniversary. This trip will extend our summer as its always hot in September in Florida though it is still technically hurricane season. I really just want to get a book, sip some sweet tea on the hammock in the shade of my momma's back yard. That is going to be summer for me.

Projects:

Here are some of the projects I've been working on. I crocheted a rug. Well I tried to crochet a rug. I tested out several patterns and they all start curling up when they get bigger. I wanted a really big rug but I had to stop because of the puckering. I used this pattern which looks great on a smaller rug as does most of the items Pickles create.

I have also grown a slew of herbs from seeds in the past few months. I was given seeds whilst on an assignment and I picked up a few other on my own. I have coriander, parsley, chives, dill and the plant shown is a chilli plant (which was actually in Billy's Xmas stocking that he never bothered to plant). I am also growing lettuce and have a Calamondin plant. This is the first time in my life I have grown something successfully!! I always say I have a black thumb instead of a green thumb due to all the foliage i have murdered in my life. I did the same science experiment every year in elementary school: Which one grows better: Marigolds grown in full sunlight or Marigolds grown in the dark. My Hypothesis: Marigolds need sun to create photosynthesis. (Seriously thats pretty much verbatim from what I did and needless to say it garnered me seriously average grades).

And lastly, the thing that made me giddy like a little girl: Billy bought me a darkroom!! I got a black and white enlarger with all the fixings and I am so incredibly eager to use it but alas chemicals are taking FOREVER to arrive. So until then my lovely darkroom kit is sitting in our spare bedroom. I am lucky that we have two bathrooms and the one we don't use often is large enough that we keep our bikes in there. There aren't any windows either so it will be really light tight. I set up my first darkroom in my house in Florida not long after my dad died and I would spend hours in there. I'd go in at 4pm and come out with sore eyes at 4am not knowing where the time went.

I think my 100th post may be my longest, but that's what happens when i put it off for ages!!

Sewing Project #13

I'm so excited this will be my third weekend off in a row! First it was because we were in Copenhagen, then last weekend I took off mainly because of the Queen's Jubilee. I am so sick of Union Jacks and everything to do with queenie.

Instead of working Billy and I went to a music festival in London called Field Day. It was an amazing line-up and I got to see Andrew Bird (swoon) and Beirut, and I found I really like The Savages, an all girl, intense quartet. Also the in-laws were in London so Sunday was spent entertaining.

Today is Billy's last day at his job at a law firm in London and next week he starts a job for the council so we are going into London tomorrow to do a celebratory wine tasting (Billy's birthday gift from December!), a good curry on Brick Lane and some record and vintage shopping. Yay.

With all that's been going on, I forgot to post a photo of a dress I made for Copenhagen. It's a simple pattern from Burda called Anda and some stripy fabric, but I used elastic at the waist instead of a drawstring. It was the first piece of clothing I've sewn in ages! I am being crafty now too. I'm crocheting a colourful rug and I am going to do my first quilt for our bedroom (more on that one later).

I'm really enjoying my quiet Friday night with some wine, Nina Simone and my crocheting until my husband gets home from his after work drinks!

We got back from Copenhagen yesterday with sunburned skin, full tummies and two souvenirs, a pen and a card. Copenhagen, or Kopenhavn as it is called in Denmark, is a city very similar to Amsterdam with bicycles outnumbering cars almost 3-1 but without the charming Dutch architecture (though it can be found here and there).

Copenhagen is also the birthplace of my great-grandfather Johan Petersen, or George Petersen as he changed it after immigrated to the US in 1900, who incidentally invented the Petersen flusher, which can be found in most toilets!

The highlights of our holiday were the Carlsberg brewery, the Vesterbro Music Festival and renting bikes and cycling across the city. Our hotel, the Axel, was pretty great as well. It was a completely organic operation and the only bad thing was the less than fluffy yet eco-friendly towels.

Vesterbro was an amazing neighborhood to stay in, only a block from the central station and really close to hip restaurants and the aforementioned music festival, which we just happened upon. It is also the Copenhagen’s red light district so there was an area called the Erotic Triangle with shady people.

I think if you had to go to Amsterdam or Copenhagen I would pick Amsterdam for its sheer beauty, but I definitely have a soft spot for Copenhagen now.

My new font

I'm really excited about my new font. I made it by printing a template, writing all my letters with my favorite pen, scanning it high-res, massively photoshopping and hours worth of scaling and sizing each character in font creating software. Was it worth it? YES!! Its pretty weird seeing your handwriting as a font. Its not quite the same as when I write because I connect most of my letters but its pretty darn close. I am using it as my header on my professional site and its nice knowing that no one else is using the same font. If anyone else whats to make their own, here's the tutorial I used. You do need basic photoshop skills and the font software.

Adventures in Polaroid...

I've been playing around with my new landcamera and here are some of the photos from this weekend. Billy and I went for a walk in the countryside (which is about five minutes from where we live). We saw cows, a tree with a hole in it where I'm sure fairytale creatures lurk, a dog belly flopping into the river (Billy has those photos), and the gorgeous rapeseed fields. I can not express how incredibly beautiful rapeseed is when its blooming. I know it doesn't have the best name but it is such a vibrant yellow and its also our oil of choice being far better than olive oil.

Chair Makeovers

I meant to post this ages ago but well I forgot. Oops. My friend Debbie came last weekend for a visit form Edinburgh and in our fervor to prepare for her royal visit Billy and I needed to tick a few boxes on our to do lists.

At one of my first assignments at my job last year I bought two chairs from a community centre for £2. It was a score as I only had an air mattress at that point. Then a few months ago, my work was having a clear out and I found two orange school chairs by the skip. So we neglected these ugly chairs for ages despite the fact we even purchased paint for them at Homebase.

So Eek Dib Dob was coming and we went into super drive and painted all four, plus our balcony table, and even covered the seats of the wood chairs. Success! Except, well, we used spray paint inside due to the weather and even though we put down a drop cloth we sufficiently coated out laminate floor in a thin sheen of red. Uh. Yeah, we have been mopping with mineral spirits and most of it is coming up but I fear we will be finding red for months.

So if you pair our chairs with our £4 Edwardian pub table, we spent a whopping £6 on our dining room furniture. I'm pretty chuffed.

Veg Box Recipes 7, 8 & 9

Its been 3 weeks without meat and I haven’t missed one bite of it. Billy is hankering for some pork or beef but I think his Scottish Highlander genes aren’t programmed for a veggie diet. Up north where he’s from, chips (French fries) are considered a vegetable and green things are just for garnish.

It’s a really funny contrast from Billy’s side of the family to my mom. Not only is my mom not a fan of meat, she recently went vegan. I guess living in the sun and sand of South Florida leads for better lifestyle food wise as she eats quinoa and spelt and loads of veg. She grows mangoes and bananas and mulberries, which are blooming right now. I actually eat my breakfast by going in her back yard and picking the freshest items. Yum.

Last week’s veg box was a bit super sized as we’re aren’t getting one this week. Boo! We’ve used up quite a bit but we are finding loads of carrots and leeks leftover. These recipes are from the second week’s box and we’ve already made one recipe twice as it was super good.

That was the roasted tomato, halloumi and quinoa salad { 7}. I love halloumi but have never tried to make something with it at home. The second time Billy made it and roasted the peppers as well as the tomatoes for a different taste.

I made another stir fry { 8 } to use up carrots, spinach, broccoli and onions from the box. We usually get big udon noodles that come already cooked and only need heating, but I found wholewheat organic udons at Waitrose and I really prefer them to the old kind.

I needed to use up our cabbage on Tuesday night, so I made a stuffed cabbage recipe { 9 } from the Veg book that had a spelt filling and a tomato sauce topping. I really liked the stuffed leaves until the next morning when I felt really nauseous and now even looking at them make me a little sick. I’m pretty sure the nausea is unrelated to the cabbage but when I opened the fridge and saw the leftovers my stomach turned so who knows.

I woke up this morning to see my new camera waiting for me on the kitchen table! Yay! I have been wanting a Polaroid land camera for ages and I've occasionally bid on one on EBay always losing out as the price went up too much for my wallet. To my surprise, I won the camera which happens to be the same amount of money I won in the office raffle so I think it was fate.

Now, when I buy a camera, Billy usually asks "Don't you already have that camera," or "Do you really need another camera?". Well the answers are no and yes. Yeah, I do have a lot of film cameras (far more than what is pictured in the photo above). It started by picking up cameras at garage sells and thrift stores regardless of whether they work or not. Now I try and get specific cameras that must work.

My new Polaroid Land Camera 104 circa 1965 was the first land camera produced for retail as it is made of plastic lenses rather than glass which made it much lighter and far more economical.

I shoot digital everyday and it can become really boring. I love shooting film and not knowing how the image will turn out. I love Polaroid even more. I think a lot of Polaroid cameras are selling cheaper these days as people think you can't get film for it. Where some older models are completely obsolete, most cameras take modern Fuji instant film (or the Impossible Project instant film).

I'm super excited about my new camera!