My Busy Craft Life

Hi again everyone! A little while ago, I had my first attempt at making jambalaya. I had it in Boston when we were there a few years back and I just had to try it. It was so good! Being a first attempt, there was of course room for improvement, and there have been a few jamalayas since. Slowly, I'm perfecting it ;) Doesn't it look yummy? The recipe comes from Allrecipes, and can be found here . It's really easy and so good! The only issue I have here in the UK is that we don't really have andouille sausage, but a lovely man at the supermarket actually took the time and effort to Google possible replacements, and saucisson or chorizo can be used as an alternative. Now that I know this, I can even try to make Gumbo again as well (that first attempt was interesting as well).  If you have any tips to improve this just let me know. Obviously in the UK no one really serves jambalaya although I made the bf into a fan :)

Hi everyone! Who would have known I've been away all week? ;) Pics of my trip will follow, but in the mean time let me share this amazing experience of visiting the Wormsley estate with you. It is an enormous estate with its own cricket ground and an amazing library. We went here to watch the cricket (a first for me, had to learn the rules first. I still don't understand it but the bf does!).  First order of the day, and in true English fashion: a lovely glass of Pimms :) Check out the cricket pitch, isn't the scenery amazing?! It was a wonderful day, and luckily the weather really played along nicely and stayed dry. We were also allowed to visit the library, full of stunning books. In front of the library there was this original Banksy! The library itself was beyond amazing. It was so impressive that we took the tour twice! There were so many amazing books, here a First Edition of Utopia (1516). And some pages of the Gutenberg bible!...

Hi everyone! You know how when you bake a cake/muffin/cupcake, and it came out really well so you want to blog about it? Happens to me all the time. Ok, maybe not the turning out amazing part but the wanting to blog about it. So the photos are in my list for forever and somehow I never get around to it. Well, as you all have seen the recipes come by on this blog already anyway (my colleagues know what they like so I end up making the same cakes a lot), here are some pics of various cakes and bakes that I just haven't had the chance to share before. If you're hungry or even peckish, you might want to grab a carrot now...  Apple and caramel cupcakes I made a while back, this was a new mix by Sainsburys so I had to try. They were amazing, complete with buttercream and caramel chunks. Of course I had to use my own cupcake liners, green for apple! Second attempt at Mary Berry's apple pie. This picture came out much better than the first one I made ;) Standard b...

Hi everyone! After Berlin we went to see my sister. I don't see her very often as we all live so far apart, but she was having her 40th birthday party so that was of course something not to be missed. It was Hello Kitty themed so great fun (even though I have to admit I can't stand Hello Kitty and I couldn't find a fun tshirt for the life of me, but it was great fun nonetheless). My sister loves all things Japanese and when I saw this cross stitch, I just had to make it for her. Yes, I know it's Chinese but it just looked amazing, and she liked it anyway :) I took a break from the Haunted House cross stitch and focused on this one for a while. And still I didn't manage to finish it in time! Here I am, on the train from Prague to Berlin, finishing up the cross stitch... ...but I finished it before we reached Berlin! Now I just had to find a frame as finding one on London turned out to be way difficult for some reason. During our time in Berlin, the w...

Hello again! Following last week's post, we took the train to Berlin from Prague. Our train was delayed which was quite lucky as that way we arrived about 2 hours after the German football team finished their welcome home event. There were about half a million people there, I'm so glad we didn't have to lug our stuff through that!   We stayed at the Westin Grand, it was the hotel from the Bourne movies! Great location, fun for a one-off. We'd been here before so we just past all the sights and took lots of funny pics More Bourne locations, remember this one? Yes yes it's obvious, we're in Berlin! We spotted this guy printing his own tshirts using one of these street thingies. Ingenious! We also saw some remaining parts of the Wall ...and had dinner with some old friends at various places. And lots of schnitzel :) We even had Kaiserschmarrn! Sooo good! The last stop on our trip was more of a family holiday so noth...

Good afternoon! Let's just start off by saying that not every project will be a hit. When I made the onesies for the giveaway and the two zippered bags , I also made a toiletry bag out of some towel fabric I had leftover from the towel dress . The crafting that day went great and I got so much done: Lots of great projects finished. This is the toiletry bag. It has several flaws with it... First, it is way too small, somehow the measurements didn't work out very well..  I used a cheap shower curtain to line it as obviously towel fabric is not waterproof. Which seemed like a great idea at the time but once finished, the shower curtain got stuck in the zipper and in less than half a second I'd torn a hole in the lining... It still looks cute though, so I think I might use it as a second baggie to put my swimsuit in when I come out of the pool or something. It just goes to show, sometimes not everything goes according to plan. But as I've learne...

Hi everyone! It's been a tough week, it's been so busy that I actually missed a few emails that were sent to me a while back LOL. Ooops... Some of you nay remember, although it's been a REALLY long time, that a lovely lady in blogland sent me the coolest table set ever in 2011 as a gift. Just like that! I still use it every day and absolutely love it. And yes, you read correctly, 2011. Until a couple of weeks back, I had not sent her something back. One thing you have to know, is that this lady makes the most beautiful quilts so I wanted to make something that she could use but that would be up to her standards as well. Easier said than done... for years I was wondering what I could make for her. Just making an apron just wouldn't cut it. But as I wrote the last few posts here, an idea started to dawn on me...  When I made all the scissor socks for myself, I also made a reversible fabric basket. I always had a pile of threads and cutoffs and never had a cute bi...

Hi again everyone! The last posts were not really sightseeing trips so I just blogged about them normally, but it's back to sightseeing! Maybe I should have named it Sightseeing Saturday or so, that would have made much more sense LOL. But back to the touristy bit :) This summer we went on a 3-city trip, the first of which was Prague! Again I took way too many pictures so I had to seriously downsize but it was such an amazing trip :) We had amazing weather, much to my liking as I was recovering from a severe cold and was still on anti-biotics. No alcohol for me unfortunately... Just after we'd arrived in the city, I spotted the Tim Burton exhibition! Of course we had to go in... only here for like 10 mins and already something great. This is going to be a great trip! (I actually knew there would be an exhibition but I didn't know where exactly so imagine my surprise when we walked right into it!) The absolute-must-have tourist picture with the medi...