summer sale + a cupcake recipe

Lemon Balm Necklace - was $36.50, now $30

I'm multitasking today!

First of all, I am having a little summer sale in my Etsy shop, stop by for some lovely bargains!

Magpie Earrings, were $19 now $15

And now to cupcakes....
Lemon Drizzle Cupcakes



As you may have realised I have something of a fondness for cupcakes lately, mainly due to the fact that my oven is awful at cooking big cakes but perfect for little cupcakes.

My favourite cake is a lemon drizzle cake, sweet and sharp and always very moist. I make it regularly.

This is adapted from a standard victoria sponge recipe and makes about 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients

for the cakes:
100g self raising flour
100g caster sugar
100g butter
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
dash vanilla extract
zest of one lemon

for the icing:

juice of one lemon
approximately 3 tablespoons icing sugar

To make:

Cream together butter and sugar til light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla and the lemon zest. Slowly fold in the flour til combined. If your mixture feels a little dry add a bit more lemon juice or milk.

Spoon into cupcake cakes on a cupcake tray and bake for 10-15 minutes at gas mark 6 / 200c.

Whilst they bake make the icing by slowly whisking in sifted icing sugar til you get an icing with the consistency of single cream. I think i used about 3 tablespoons, but feel free to use less or more depending on how it turns out.

Wait for the cakes too cool, not so they are stone cold but just a bit warm. Poke each cake once witha fork so you have some 'channels' for the icing. Drizzle icing sugar on to each cake until it is nicely coated, I found a pastry brush was good at the end to coat the cakes on top.



Eat immediately!

xx

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cat progress

I think its been maybe um a couple of weeks since I blogged about cats?

apologies for the fuzzy picture, Mr snapped this one quickly! You can see me making salsa at mega speed in the background!

Anyway, we are making a bit more progress with these two. Jess (black and white one) thinks Tilly (tabby one) is the best thing ever, but Tilly is very much not convinced, or at least is pretending not to.

I am pleasantly suprised, its been about 6months and they are getting on much better than I thought. We've not had any proper fighting yet, in fact both of them have had more scuffles with next doors cat than each other. Which is nice.

I'll stop being a cat lady now and get onto being a serious grown up ;)

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slate

This is actually a drinks coaster..
I love how well it photographs next to my jewellery, it works with almost any piece and it gives great depth and interest to them.

I think I may have to use this for all of my pictures in future!

They also look great around the house too, you may have spotted them in various food related bloggings.

xx

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weekend eating

I made a big caesar salad. Tip - follow the recipe when it says 'mild olive oil' and don't use the extra flavourful italian olive oil crushed by a friend of a relative in his very own olive grove. Its wonderful olive oil but far too strong for caesar dressing!

x

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just two

I had a mildly productive weekend, I had lots of orders to pack up (yay!) so my attention turned to them. I made these new pair of earrings afterwards, I've been hoarding the beads for a little while, and finally found a good design for them.

I did have some similar smaller beads which I used for these earrings but the larger beads had me unstuck for a while. I hope you like these, they are rare and were given to me by a relative, there will be just 2 pairs for my etsy shop.


xx

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200!

Happily I am approaching 200 sales in my Etsy shop! Amazing!

Thank you to all my customers for stopping by my shop over the last couple of years, the time has actually whizzed by quite fast and I've had lots of fun developing my designs.

I am at 197 sales right now, for my 200th customer I am offering a very special gift - a free pair of my Simple Rose earrings (best sellers, y'know ;)) with their order.

I am also offering free shipping in my shop until Saturday morning :)


Thank you for looking!

xxx

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fresh new jewellery

Retro Rainbow Bracelet - one of a kind
Made with lots of different lucite beads left from other projects, I've been wanting to make a little mixed up bracelet for a while, I love the rubix cube look this has.

Cinderella Earrings
Beautiful gilded gold and white vintage lucite beads, gold fill chain and sterling silver.

Apple Brandy Earrings
Glowing amber vintage lucite beads, handformed brass teardrops and brass earwires.

Hoping for even more new things this week!
xxx

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back to normal + new jewellery

Well I'm back again now, I had a few days away plus a couple of days off work to work on my jewellery. I didn't manage any bobby pins but I have lots of new things for the shop anyhow!


Thankfully Tuesday brought four lovely packages of beads so I could get on with some new designs. I have updated my Kiwi earrings with new earwires and also listed these beautifully bright Emerald earrings made with little vintage glass flowers.


My favourite from my new haul of supplies are these little porcelain Japanese flowers, I had planned these as being for bobby pins but they are so beautiful that I can't part with them! Ideas on a postcard (or comments box hehe) for what I can do with them please.

I've got two more pairs of earrings to list plus a gorgeous multicolour bracelet too, so keep checking back!

xxx

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away

Just to let you know I'll be away from my shop for a few days, any orders made between 16th - 19th July will be shipped out on Monday 20th July.

Thanks for your patience :)

I have a couple of lovely days off work next week so expect lots of new things in my etsy shop. Hoping to launch my new range of bobby pins, made using little lucite flowers.

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Etsy finds!

Whilst being caught up in black forest gateau, days at the beach and summer fruit I forgot to blog about my feature in the Etsy Finds email.

My sale at the weekend was featured in their 'Winning Weekend Deals' email and article on Friday!
You can find the article here:

I had a wonderful response to the email and several lovely orders, thanks to everyone who visited my shop :)

My 'Bloom' locket necklace was featured, which I am very pleased about. It is one of my newest pieces, I love working with lockets and they are always so well received.

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Weekend in pictures

Black Forest gateau, Mr's birthday cake :)
recipe adapted from here, I used a lot less cream though!

Second haul of fresh cherries for black forest gateau

Dunes and seafront at Walberswick

Sweet red gooseberries (you can eat these raw, unlike their sharp green counterparts) and little blackcurrants. Bought from a little cart at the side of the road, with an honesty money box.

We had a lovely Sunday in Suffolk, spent some time walking on the beach and then a drink in a local pub on the way back - which had ales made just around the corner! I do like the Suffolk countryside, and its just on our doorstep.

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moo business cards

I am so pleased with these!

I found that moo were giving away 10 free business cards, so I thought I'd give them a whirl.

I love how professional they look, I went for the nice recycled card with a matte finish, they look suprisingly luxurious and the colours work really well with my photos. I do love my mini cards but there is something very classic about these, I may have to start using these instead.

They would also make perfect necklace cards for craft fairs, they are the perfect size, with a good design and some slits either side they would be great.

You can get your free cards here
I had to pay an additional £3 to have the moo logo taken away, which was definitely worth it.

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Hard worker

I've been very determined so far this week, at keeping my shop flowing with new lovelies.
I seem to have been inspired by the slightly more thundery weather of this week, these look particularly rustic to me. All of these are in my Etsy shop.


xx

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grazing..

I'm a sucker for two things:

1. free things
2. food

So when I saw that Graze were offering customers their first order of their snack boxes for free, I had to try it out.

You can find out more about Graze here - www.graze.com.
They make little boxes filled with healthy and not so healthy goodness - dried and fresh fruit, nuts, seeds, chocolate, crackers etc - designed for office workers trying to eat something a bit healthier during the day.

This is something I am trying to do more, rather than reaching for the biscuit tin. Having said that, this box didn't actually make it to the office, it stayed at home where it was promptly eaten up!

My first box didn't contain any fresh fruit due to a problem in their packing, but I did receive a nice selection of japanese rice crackers, 'fire nuts' (not a male affliction by the way), dried raspberries and chocolate buttons!

Unfortunately the chocolate buttons were not of the best quality chocolate and had that supermarket own brand of chocolate taste to them, so they were promptly baked into cookies where they became much better :)

The fire nuts were my favourite, mainly because they contined Wasabi Peanuts, which is something I wanted to try for a while.

Graze seem to love their voucher codes so its pretty hard to pay full price for a box, they were even kind enough to give me a code to pass on to others, so you can use this code for a free box:

9ZD1RYBE
www.graze.com

xx

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one of a kind..

{a nice person on flickr says I have 'boken' or 'bokeh' on this picture,
I didn't realise it myself but I think I have?}

I've been hunting extra carefully and I am so pleased to bring you this set of rare 1940s beads in the form of earrings and a necklace.

They are my favourite kind of beads, they have a rippled watery kind of texture and are nice high quality glass. I've had them in a deep amber before and now I've found them in this rich purple.
I've matched them with gold fill and dark oxidized silver.

I hope you like :)

I hope to find more beads in this style but different colours, who knows? I may or may not! Fingers crossed.

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Cherry picking, pitting and er.. pieing?

Well I did have a rather lovely start to the weekend. Where I work there are several small farmers, nurseries and vegetable growers so every now and again something fabulously seasonal, local and yummy comes up food wise.

There is a chap who sells Asparagus in early May, the nursery next door has a fabulous selection of weird and wonderful squashes in the autumn and there is talk of raspberries in the summer from someone else.

This month it is cherries. I think amongst all the talk of Wimbledon and strawberries, cherries do get rather lost. They are just as great when in season and fresh, local cherries aren't a patch on the rubbery supermarket types.

Driving into work last Thursday I saw a great big sign for 'CHERRIES - 2MILES' - hurrahing slightly to myself, I came prepared on Friday with change and flat shoes, with my sights set on cherry pie.

I picked a generous 1/2 kilo of during my cherries (£2! bargain!) during my lunch hour and returned to work just in time for a cuppa and a biscuit before the desk job continued - the kind of lunchbreak I like..

{stems on one side and pips arranged neatly on the other - weird?}

I found this recipe for Sweet Cherry Pie on my favourite food blog, Smitten Kitchen. I had a few pastry problems when preparing it, but we'll gloss over that and I'll show you this instead...


I'm going to go back at the end of the week with plans for a kind of black forest gateau. We also had cherries and pancakes on Saturday morning, which were fabulous, but I forgot to take a picture unfortunately for I am still a novice food blogger ;)

xx

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