Blue Ridge Reveal

Hello!!!
I hope you are well.
Thank you for reading and your messages.
I've been so quiet in the land of blog. What with work, kids and our Disney trip next week....yes next week : ) Life is rather busy.

I am however still scrapbooking and loving every minute that I get to scrap.
My October Cocoa Daisy kit came, Blue Ridge and I have loved this kit to bits.
There isn't much left already. Always a good sign I think.

The kit was revealed last night and has sold super fast. I understand that there is already a wait list for the main kit now. You can view the kit galleries here to see what we all made with the kit.

I made this first LO within 40mins of opening up the kit.

 

This photo was taken at the end of July when we went down to the coast (Mudeford) for a day. The kids were too cool to paddle. So we left them sat on a wall, kicked off our shoes and had fun in the sea without them. 

 

 I used the main kit here along with the 'Day in the Life' Kit.

I hope you have a happy Monday.
Thanks for stopping by xx

Lovely Moments with added Unicorns

We had many of these lovely moments when my family recently visited.
One in particular was a Sunday morning when we went for a stroll from our home.

I made a LO about this walk for a Cocoa Daisy Challenge which you can play along with here.

Me, Millie & Sarah-Jane

This walk was so much fun.
We are only a 5 minutes walk from Yateley Common, but there was an area that we were yet to explore.
Castle Bottom.
We've walked past the signs for this area before but never ventured through the kissing gates.
From our house, once we are on the common we walk around to the disused runway. The blackberries are great at the end of summer.

 

Ade & Louis

We usually follow the runway around and head back home, but today we went through the woodland at the top of the runway.

 

 

But not before my sister, Sarah-Jane, headed in to the bushes for a wee.
This happens on every outing with her.

We then arrived at the fence with the kissing gates to enter Castle Bottom.
The area that was unknown to us (after Ade having lived here all his life and me having lived in Yateley for 16years)

 

And this is the view that met us.

 

The heather was so pretty.

 

 

 

There were clear walk ways to follow.

 

Which then became a wooden walkway leading down.

 

 

Lots of stopping and chatting throughout.

 

And then we found this little gem of a place.

 

 

 

Shoes and socks soon came off.

 

 

And dresses were tucked in to knickers.

 

 

Millie

 

 

 

Then the paddling began. It was soooo cold.

 

 

It really is so beautiful here. It felt like we were on holiday and not a short walk from home.

 

 

 

 

 

We spent quite some time here paddling, chatting and messing around. I wish we'd have taken a picnic. I could have spent all afternoon here. Not a single other person was in sight.

Hollie

 

Daddy

 

Ben, Louis &  Hollie

Ben

 

And my darling sister, Sarah-Jane

 

I've left out the photo of her trying to put her tights back on and rolling back on the ground with all bits exposed or the ones when her dress came down too. It's hard to find a normal photo of this girl.

 

Anyway, we decided to continue with the walk. There was another wooden walkway up on the other side to where we had come. We had no idea where this headed.

 

 

 

As we got to the top and the ground evened out again we were met with this coming over to us rather quickly.

 

 

My brother in law filmed little Millie's excitement as the wild pony approached. I just love this.

You should be able to see this mini video here.

Little Millie shouting ''We found a wild horse. Isn't it amazing??'

And me saying ''it's a unicorn'.

It does look like a unicorn, doesn't it?!!

I wanted one of those blow up unicorn horns right then to attach to it's head.  

It really did feel very magical right in that moment.

I did keep my distance though, I'm not fond of ponies and horses. The rest of the family were braver than me.

 

 

Then another started galloping through rather pronto.

 

 

 

Joined by a couple more.

I was so ready to leave at this point.

 

 

Then there were big horses too.

 

 

The walk continued and everything opened up again and we went from woodland to this feeling very high up again.

 

 

I kept thinking how lucky we are to live here.

 

 

 

The walkway lead back down again then towards the woodlands.

 

 

 

And after a while we were back in the areas that we were familiar with.

 

 

It's times like this when I see us all together that I really how many there are of us when Dad comes to stay.

We had a really lovely time.

I loved this morning.

Family times are the best!!!

 

 

 

Blue Ridge is Coming

As the September Cocoa Daisy Kits are arriving on your doorsteps, it's time for us to start thinking about October.
October is called 'Blue Ridge'.
Here is a little taster for you.

 

I'm loving the look of this one.

Those blues, greens and yellow is perfect for me.

I can't wait for mine to arrive.

I'm ready for a new kit, I've almost used up everything from this months : )

 

Have a good day xxx

 

WORD UP #87 - Fear

Fear

That's the word this month given to us by Revlie over at 'One Little Word'.
How does this word inspire you?
Come and join us here and add your own LO.
Come and see what the DT made this month.

Here is my contribution.

 

I documented some of my fears right now around the edge.

I used my September Cocoa Daisy kit for this page.

 

 

 

 

Come and play along with us xxx

Apple Cake

I feel the need to share this recipe.

I was sat reading through a couple of recipe books a couple of days ago.
Books I'd picked up in the US.
One is from the nicest B&B that I could ever possibly imagine.
It would be the main reason that we would visit Santa Monica in LA again.
Not that we didn't like Santa Monica, we loved it, but this B&B was just something else.  
You can read about it here.
They are a chain called 'Four Sisters'.
We would love to visit their other locations.
One of the things we loved about our stay was the home baked goodies that were always being baked and were on offer for you to help yourself.
The kitchen door was open and the place just smelt so good.
Freshly baked cookies in your room and we were told to help ourselves to the pantry goodies, especially if we fancied a midnight snack : )

After experiencing their amazing breakfasts and the wine and cheese evenings, which were complimentary and didn't just consist of wine and cheese, we are taking baked breads, crackers, olives, salads, fresh dips. It was divine.

Naturally being a bit of a foodie and loving to cook and bake myself I bought their cookbook home.
Yesterday I made the Apple Cake.

 

Now it says Apple Coffeecake, but I can not see the coffee and neither did I add any. 

I hope you can read the recipe from the photo.

 

Now a few things that I did change and to be honest I need to make some more changes as it didn't quite go to plan.

 

It says to bake in a 8x8'' tray. My smallest was 10x10'' so I popped it in a loaf tin and baked on 400f (200C) as instructed to do so for 20mins.

It was starting to blacken on top after the 20mins and was still very wet inside when I tested it.

So I turned it down to 180c for a further 10-15 mins, keeping going back to check.

 

I think next time I will put it all in a tray and not in a loaf tin.

 

Another change, I replaced the 1/4 cup of butter for veg oil to go in the cake batter.   

I just finds this moistens the cake more.

I also added 1/2 tsp of ground ginger to go in with the cinnamon.

 

Oh and for the US recipes, when it says flour, that's just plain flour to us.

 

Now this bit I found strange.

You mix up the dry in one bowl and the wet in another and then add the wet to the dry. You then pour in the cake tin.

That's fine.

But you then melt 6 tblsp oF butter and mix with the brown sugar, flour and cinnamon.

It's then poured over the top of the cake batter.

 

This cake smelt amazing and it looked pretty good too.

 

 

As it needed to be left in longer it did look a little black on top. So I dusted with icing sugar : )

It's all about covering up when it comes to baking and crafts!!

Despite the colour under the sugar it was so crisp because of the sugar and butter mixture that was poured over. It didn't taste burnt at all.

 

I was going to a friends for afternoon tea and took it over whilst still hot. It was like eating hot cinnamon buns. A little crisp, but so hot and gooey inside and the cinnamon was yummy.

 

We have all our neighbours coming over tomorrow night and I have a huge chill

in the crockpot right now and will be making a double batch of this cake too which I plan to serve whilst still hot.   

I'm already excited!!

 

Let me know if you give this a whirl and how it turns out.

Have a lovely weekend xxx

 

Playtime

Do you have your own 'playtime'?
What do you like to do?
Shut yourself away in your craft room?
Go out for a jog or go to the gym?
Visit friends?

I love spending time in my kitchen.
I'm not talking 5pm...making dinner, kids moaning etc... as much as I love my kitchen, that bits not always fun : )
But the times when I choose to be in there I love it.
Music playing, candles lit, wearing a pretty apron, using beautiful bakeware and making something that looks and tastes delicious.
That is fun!!

So this is the Cocoa Daisy mid month challenge.
I've made this page with this months kit. Isn't it pretty?!!
I love the exclusive Cocoa Daisy papers. I could use these over and over again.

The floral papers are so pretty to cut up.

 

If you want to join us and play along, you can read about it on the Cocoa Daisy blog here.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a super day xxx

 

Word Up #86 : LOST

Denise picked this months word over at OLW.
This month the word is LOST.
What does this word mean to you?
How does it inspire you?
Why don't you scrap a LO based on this word and play along with us.
Simply visit this blog page here, see what the others have made and link up your work.

I scrapped my LO just after my Uncle recently passed, so it seemed very timely to scrap about our families loss, especially as I still miss my Grandad so much too.

 

The photo was taken 9 years ago during my Grandparents Ruby Wedding Party.

At these times everyone is well and happy, you don't think that people will just suddenly go.

I miss those days.

 

xxx

Silliness and Stamping

Both are part of todays LO.
A very silly story using one of my September Cocoa Daisy stamps.

 

I used one of the scribble stamps to create the border around my photos.

 

And this is the silly story:

We were waiting at the airport for my Dad to arrive after no having seen him for a year. It all gets very silly and giggly the 3 of us kids together. We love this special time every year. The excitement and his arrival.

There's always a joke about me baing the favourite. My sister always trys to push me out of the way, This year I made a sign saying 'The Favourite Daughter'. I asked my brother to take a photo of us 3 together and then whipped out the sign : )

We have some really fun stamps over at Cocoa Daisy this month. You can see them all here and see some great examples of how they have been used.

Have a lovely day xx