winter boots

ach, I want these, if only I could knit convincingly in more than a square, or follow a pattern... does anyone want to make me a pair?! no? darn....

prairie boots from cocoknits via pepperstitches

Chocolate fudge cake

Holy crap that cake is good. its a heart attack in a cake, but my golly gosh it is mighty fine! Go make this now. or tonight. but soon. Thank you Nigella :)

10 things...

1 - I'm scared of the dark. very very stupidly scared, so scared that I will bolt along a corridor and slam a door behind me to be safely into the light. Its something I really need to get over before I have children!

2 - We finished our second times jumbo crossword this weekend, and we were very chuffed :)

3 - the sound of music is one of my favourite films, although I also love to many others to recount here.

4 - We have a growing collection of ceramics and bowls ( in many cases ceramic bowls) around the house, all of which I love.

5 - I love cooking and baking, I made the chocolate cake that dreams are made of last night, I may post about it later. I love Italian food, one of my favourites is a very simple mozzarella, beef tomato and olive oil salad. it makes my mouth water just thinking of eating that somewhere on a lovely piazza in Italy.

6 - When we go on holiday I like to get photos of the city we're in from the highest most interesting points possible, even though I hate heights. Rome - the Vatican dome; Portugal - a camera obscura in a converted water tower; Edinburgh - the Scott monument. (ideas for future viewpoints welcome)

7 - I love my cats like they are my babies. I understand that's weird to some people , but until I have children, these boys are mine.

8 - I am an only child, but always wanted to be a twin.

9 - I am convinced I will cry my way through my wedding. I am convinced of this mainly because I cry every time I imagine it. that's a fairly big clue I think.

10 - I love sarcasm a bit too much.

I'll pass this onto:

Mrs ER at Eden Rose

Fay at Dreaming of an Aga

Rosalie at Rosalie tinted

Becky at teacups, cupcakes

and you get to tell us all what your random ten things are :)

p.s. I've not passed it onto many people because I've not many in my reader and I don't want to keep giving the same people awards every time I get them. I'll have to expand my reading repertoire I think!

Ogden Nash reading

To Keep Your Marriage Brimming

Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
To keep your marriage brimming,

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you're wrong admit it;

Whenever you're right shut up.

via: BlushingJoy

so cute, I just had to share it with you. And so true to us, and just irreverent enough that I might have to fit it somewhere into our wedding too :)

made my day.

more lovely awards!

Thank you Eden Rose, for this lovely lemonade award!

I'll have a think about who to pass it onto, and post again later!

And thank you also to Gaynor, of our day by design, who's awarded me this:

and tagged me in a '10 random things' thingymajig. So I'll have a think about those too, and pass it all on later! Thank you both, you ladies are stars!

wedding list idea #1

I hate blogger, I wrote this whole post and then it deleted it all. :( anyway, wedding lists. We weren't originally going to have a wedding list, as we've lived together for several years, and have all the usual things for wedding lists (good crockery - thank you denby seconds shop - nice cutlery etc) so at first we were going to ask for vouchers to a few big department stores so that we could choose larger things like a rug, in our own time, when we were ready for it. But then I keep seeing things that we need or want, like a new set of pans, or this printing block montage:

montage: notonthehighstreet (this one says 'oli & nic 16th July 2005')

Then I was reading someones blog (sorry I can't remember who, do tell me if its you though!), and they were talking about this mug from Heals:

We actually have a 'map of the world' shower curtain already, extremely useful for the crosswords that we're into doing at the moment so I thought this mug would be a helpful addition to our bizarre reference material that we use, but then I saw these other ones in the set! These are totally going on the wedding list:

mugs: all from Heals

Have any of you lovely people used one of those websites that let you register for things from loads of different shops? I think they would be more use to us as we are starting to want one or two things from lots of different shops. If you have please tell me if they work or not, because they look like they would be more use to us than anything else...

DIY #2 completed.

Remember the hankies I posted about a while back? well the other night I finished them :)

(the rosebuds were already on them. I'm not superhuman)

late summer sun

I've been enjoying the weather these last few days, its had that crisp hint of autumn feel to it. We've not, it has to be said, had the best of summers up here this year, so to see the sun in plain view has been a pleasure. Despite the start of autumn seeming imminent, our sunflower has chosen now to finally come into flower. its not the biggest flower but its made me happy today :)

dreaming...

If I had got married today, I would have worn a 60's lacy dress like the one below that I found in a vintage shop the other day and couldn't afford despite it only being £35...vintage dress: redoredux

I would have carried these hydrangeas that were drying in the garden so I cut them...

I imagine skipping down the steps afterwards, in mary janes, in the bright autumny sun we had here today, with a lovely vintage suitcase...

suitcase:AubieJeanVintage

...and having pictures taken on a polaroid camera.

Well...theres no harm in dreaming...

the dress.

Well I said I would so I will. but I wanted to show you pictures, and I really can't find many that will allow me to put them on here. If any of you have some secret resource for getting these pictures please tell me... So you will have to, for the large part, imagine the dresses I'm talking about until I buy one and have a fitting!

Back to the beginning:

Pretty much as soon as I started looking in magazines when I got engaged, (and before I found you, my lovely blogging friends) I was picking out fairly particular styles. Slight fishtail, straps, lace, and pleating/ruching. And I wanted a little bolero jacket for the church service, because I'm getting married in October, and I'm a comfort over looks sort of girl. I've only visited one shop throughout this shopping process. Some of you may find that silly or naive, but I was recommended this shop by several people before my first visit, and she has been wonderful every time I've been to see her, so I've felt no need to look any further. I've tried an A-line dress, which showed me that I don't want to create a big personal space around me which I have to look after for the day; I tried on the most beautiful lacy Lusan Mandongus dress which showed me that while I adore lace dresses, I need something which distracts from my stomach; I've tried on a dress with straps that shows me I need strapless despite never wearing strapless ever before; I've tried dresses with beading that showed me I hate bling.

At this point I should mention that it was my intention to have a dress made. I mean custom made. My reasons for sounding poncy like this are to do with my dissertation. By no means do I claim to be the be all and end all on this subject, and there are (as I've found out since my dissertation) two sides to every story. However, my dressmaker had a sample book of organic silks, in which there was one which seems perfect for what we wanted. So when I was trying on dresses, it was with a view to picking my favourite bits and having one made in that.

Time and time again though, we kept going back to the same dress. Strapless, fishtailed (but not in a slutty way), ruched across my chest and stomach, and not too big a train, the dress is beautiful. I love it. its this one.

beautiful dress: Suzanne Neville

this story of pretty dresses isn't over. But I'm not going to finish it now for you either. I've not sealed the deal, made the final decisions, and signed on the dotted line to anything yet, and I don't like writing on here that I'm doing one thing, and I end up backtracking and doing another. So... to be continued...

P.S. I hope you like it...

Fancy a brew?

No, not that type of brew..it was another way of using up our massive fruit harvest. We've made 1 demijohn of plum wine, and 5 of apple wine. these have been fermenting for the last week in big buckets, last night was time for the first filtering into demijohns, and now they're happily bubbling away in the larder. Don't know whether it'll actually be any good at the end of it, but we're trying! the one on the right below is the plum wine, its a rather disturbing pink colour, and its taken about 24 hours for it to calm down enough for us to keep the bung in the top and trust it on the shelf, rather than the sink.

pass it on...

Ok, I'm back, having deliberated on and off all day on who to give the award to. My choices were:

Kirsty from sixty one A, I love her gorgeous driftwood boats, and the little robins on cinnamon sticks that she's made for Christmas!

Louise from postcards from behind the hedge and beyond, I'm a sucker for book art (Su blackwell and Tom Phillips are my constant loves)

And finally, to Hannah, from seeds and stitches whose blog is a constant entertainment and delight to read and sort of honorarily to her hubby Dave, look, he made them both recycled Iphone covers!

You three get to pass it on to 3 others now who you feel are worthy of your praise :)

In other news, I found a recipe for Key lime pie that only took 4 limes, so I made that last night (thanks Delia) and Thanks catherine for your suggestions, I just like my puddings a bit too much!

I'm off today to try on a few beautiful dresses at my friendly neighbourhood bridal shop, so I think its probably time to fill you in on all that soon. Wedding talk! I bet you all thought it had dissappeared from here!

made my day...

Sorry I havn't been very present this week. not only did my hours go up at work because of stocktake (yuk) but I've just not had much to say. I did however get to see a load of old college friends at some of our other college friends MA show. The work was fantastic, and it was great to see so many old frends again. Other than that, and taking to cat to the vets cos some other meany cat (probably my other cat) bit him on the head, the weeks just filled up with work.

Then today, I take my second daily look at blogger (I look a lot), and there she is, lovely Fay of Dreaming of an aga gave me an award, a lovely pretty Kreativ blogger award!

thank you Fay, in fact this award made me smile so ridiculously that james noticed, and demanded to know why. so the cat is out of its proverbial bag. I didn't like that I had a secret from him, but I also know that he doesnt always like how much time I can happily spend reading and surfing the interweb. Anyway, he was fine, so now he knows I blog, and we have no secrets again:) so thank you Fay, for more than just the award! However, I'm not going to pass it on just yet, I'm going to have a think about who to give this award to, at the moment I have a fairly small circle of blogs that I read, so there weren't many creative ones that weren't already covered by Fays awarding earlier on! so I'll come back later on with my choices.

In other news, does anyone have a good simple delicious recipe for limes? I have 3 sitting around that I want to use, but Key lime pie takes 8?!?!