cupcakes!

I have been experimenting with making & decorating cupcakes lately.

I have got the recipe for the cakes off to a fine art now - a 4 egg sponge mixture fills 24 muffin cases and makes nice big cakes. The frosting has been a bit more difficult - the first batch was just plain butter icing but that was too firm to pipe out. This next batch - photoed - was a bit better but a bit too runny so did not keep the shape of the swirls properly.

The final batch was best and made with 8 oz icing sugar, 4oz marg, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence and just 1 teaspoon hot water. I now need to experiment with different colours for the icing. Lakeland have got some colouring gels so I think I will buy some of those when I am next in town.

The cupcakes have gone down a treat and nobody complaining about batch after batch appearing in the kitchen.

the first Gran canaria layout

Jessica and her friends are the sweetest girls you could ever wish to meet - so when I saw these photos of them with their hoods up on the flight going on holiday (apparently the plane was really cold) I had a chuckle and thought how un-hoodie-like these girls are - so I just had to use them to make a lovely layout - so a nice quick and easy one today.

Card stock is Bazzill, PP : October afternoon : country fair - cotton candy. The rest is all Love Elsie - Toby. N0. 84 in my 104 target for the year.

Just read on Elsie's blog today that she has resigned from KI Memories, so no more Love Elsie - I had better stock up on the ranges I have not got - though that might have to wait until next month as I am broke now as I had to get a new passport today - £72 + £7 checking fee + £7 photos from Jessops = £86!! Just think how much stash I could have got for that.

Actually have just had a samll stash purchase recently - these Buzz & Bloom Chipboard journalling blocks. They look fab on their blog - hope I can make them look just as good.

Liam has had his second day at 6th form college and it seems to be going well so far - well apart from being late both days! A friend's daughter is in his form and is very keen to snitch on any thing he gets up to - at least I might find out what he gets up to now. He refused any new term photos though - I must say that he did look gorgeous so its a shame there is no record of it.

milano Aqua paradise

I have scrapped at last! Jess came back from Gran Canaria this week with a loads of new photos so thought I had better do a layout with photos of her Milan holiday first! This double layout shows the fun she & Aaron had at the water park.

Its an ok layout. I am disappointed in that I wanted to make the title Italian and use Milano and Aqua paradisium. but I only had scraps of the alphas to use so did not have enough letters to make the title as I really wanted it - so it is a boring English title. I decided to follow a Becky Fleck page map for this layout- but as usual - this final work looks nothing like the page map!

Cardstock is from DCWV pastel stack, PP - urban lily: doodle daisy, alphas - making memories flocked Velvet and doodlebug designs: all mixed up white rub ons. Journalling stickers : American Crafts. Ribbon, stickles glitter glue. Flip flop brads - Lakeland.

This is the original page map I tried to follow - I always worry when my final layout looks so different from the sketch I should have been following - because the original had some design element thrown into it - whereas mine is just a mish mash of putting things were they can go without much design element to it - which is why they never look as good as the experts ones.

No longer barking up the wrong tree!

A little bit cryptic I know - but this is the name of the geocache (GCZEXP) we could not find along the Aberystwyth coastal path in the summer. Well it had actually gone missing and the owner replaced it last week, so we felt secure enough to make a return journey and today we found it!! It is only a titchy thing but it has driven us mad!

We were back in Aberystwyth because Steven could not get the idea of owning a caravan at Clarach Bay out of his head- so he wanted to go back and have another look. He is even more keen now, but there were no caravans available on the site we preferred so this purchase is on hold for a while - thank goodness as I am still waiting for some news on the kitchen front- he seems to think that I can make do with the rotten pile of junk that is our so called present one! I am not a happy bunny!

We has a good old stroll around Aberystwyth exploring new places, which all looked lovely even on a cloudy day!

This is the harbour and I would much prefer to own a flat here rather than a caravan - but I think they would be way out of our price range!

The castle was lovely - lots of old ruins. The children would have had fun here when they were little - running around them all.

The University buildings on the sea front are architecturally beautiful - but the coastal weather has not done the buildings any favours - it needs quite a lot of maintenance now.

We had a drink and a cake at the cafe on top of Constitutional Hill again. My cake was a toffee tray bake and it was gorgeous, so I am off to Google for a recipe to make one now.

Spinning around layout

This layout shows Jessica & Aaron spinning around on the famous bull mosaic in Milan in August. Apparently it is a tradition that brings good luck - so they had to do it to ensure a trouble free holiday.

papers are (yellow) fancy pants designs - Crush by Michelle Coleman - Whimsical. Plain paper ( cut by free hand) We R Memory Keepers - urban window collection - Home made strawberry preserves ( reverse side), American Crafts Remarks alphas stickers & Making Memories tiny brown alphas - brown ledger. Buttons John Lewis, Glitz it sparkles glitter glue from the blue collection.

This is No. 81 in my 104 target for the year

Google fest

I love Google and I have spent all day playing with 2 of their latest offerings :- Google Chrome and Picasa 3.



Picasa 3 is the latest version of their photo editing suite: which is so easy to use. It was really hard to find the download for this latest version, so half my day has been spent actually finding the thing, but my perseverance payed off and now it is installed on all the computers in the house. This version allows text on the photos which as a scrapbooker I have missed in the previous version. It also has an improved collage section which will be fun to play with. I was hoping that it would also allow different size photos to be printed but can't find that yet - though will keep looking. I have had to return this afternoon to PS Elements to print out some odd size photos for a layout following one of Becky Fleck's page maps.



Google Chrome is their first attempt at a web browser to compete against Internet Explorer. This is only installed on my laptop while I have a play with it. It has a simple interface - slightly similar to Opera in that it shows thumbnails on the front page of your most visited web sites.

I will keep you posted on how I get on with these 2 new items over the next couple of weeks.

creativity at last...

but in the kitchen not the craft room.
I made this gorgeous pud yesterday - Banoffe Pie - it is so delicious but I dread to think how many calories are in each slice.

It was very easy to make:-

1 small pack of digestive biscuits
4oz butter melted
1 397g tin of Carnation caramel
2 large bananas - finely chopped
tub of already thick whipped double cream
cocoa powder to dust

Turn the biscuits into fine crumbs and then add melted butter.
Press down into a deep 8" sandwich cake tin and put in fridge for 20 mins
Open tin of caramel and spread over biscuit base.
Put whipped cream in bowl and add the chopped bananas, then spread over the caramel.
dust with cocoa powder and chill for a further 30 mins and serve.
It is very filling so only small portions are needed!

Recipe obtained from the back of the tin of Carnation caramel.