{Ministry of Food} Teapot Biscuits Recipe

 I was delighted at the weekend when I found these super cute teapot cookie cutters on sale. 

Hubby was a bit miffed on missing out on some coffee cake the day before so I broke with tradition  and made these teapot biscuits coffee flavoured  for him!!

 Recipe

275g Plain Flour

25g Cocoa Powder

30g Drinking Chocolate Powder

75g Icing Sugar

1 tbsp instant coffee

225g Stork

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat oven to 175C

Crush coffee powder into a fine powder using a pestle and mortar.

Sieve flour, cocoa powder and drinking chocolate into a bowl. Add coffee and set aside.

Cream stork together with icing sugar and vanilla extract.

Gradually add sieved dry ingredients (flour /coffee/ cocoa )  to this mix. Bring together until dough forms a ball. 

Remove from bowl and roll out on a flour dusted surface until  0 .75cm.

Cut shapes from dough and place on greased baking tray.

Bake for 12 minutes until cooked through but not coloured.

Remove from oven and cool on wire rack.

When cooled decorate.

Enjoy!!!!

Lazy Sunday

Today has been  ever so nice and relaxed, some baking, some listening to music....

You'll all know I'm a big fan of top chap,  Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer. When we went to see him last month FromeTV were there with cameras. The resulting film has now surfaced and I've popped it here for you all to enjoy! and Yes I am just in it for a milli-second! LOL. 

Tickets for his upcoming gig in Swindon have gone on sale this weekend too, pick some up here.



Mr B Gentleman Rhymer brings 'Chap Hop' to Frome from Frome.tv on Vimeo.

{Beginners Guide} Vintage Colour

 Image via DressingVintage

... or breaking away from neutrals.

Remember when you were a child and wore clothes because you liked them, not because they went together or coordinated? You wore things that made you feel happy, and somehow, sometimes, you just looked amazing

My daughter is great at this, at only 9 she can pull random colours from her wardrobe and have a fantastic outfit in 2 minutes, smiles beaming all over her face!! Somewhere between childhood and grown up we can loose the joy of wearing colours and find ourselves sticking to safe neutrals!

My mother would take great pleasure in telling you that when I was 16 most of my wardrobe consisted of  black, by the time I left home and started work in an office, I had matured to a mostly navy wardrobe!! Now I am guilty of being drawn to buying grey , grey or grey grrr!!

The world of Vintage can be a wonderful journey into colour!!!

|Browsing the photos of vintage clothing on Etsy can be like dipping into a big bowl of sweets, so many lovely colours! Who wouldn't want to wear all that happiness!

Ok, we're entering a slightly scary area for some of you, so once again I'm here to hold your hand....

Start Small

There are some colors that scream vintage to even mainsteam  viewers, by mixing these with your neutral wardrobe as an accent colour, it can ease you in gently. Try mustard, cherry red or jade

 

Brittany - VaVoom Vintage

Take inspiration from homes

Every decade has its palette of colour, peruse the palettes and take inspiration for your wardrobe

kohler.

Go to the site and slide along to timeline for your desired decade!!!

Go with the seasons

Its a lot easier to feel relaxed in colour if you are in harmony with your surroundings. Remember being drawn to wearing red at Christmas? You looked fab and didn't feel too self concious did you? Try pastels in spring, Candy brights  in Summer, or Russets in Autumn

dethrose's sand and sea look

Use a Colour Wheel

beadworks.co.uk

Want to know what colour accessories to wear with your new dress? Use a colourwheel.

An easy guide to using a colourway
1. Choose the colour you want to wear
2. Decide if you want toning, harmonising or contrasting colours.
- For Toning colours choose from within that slice of the wheel (lighter or darker tones of that 1st colour)
- For complimentary colours choose from the slices either side of your original colour.
- For contrasting colours chose from the slice directly opposite your original colour.
3. Don't be afraid to mix all three across your clothes and accessories,eg. lighter and darker shades of green for an outfit with red accent accessories.



Take Inspiration from Something you love

Do you have a favourite painting or vintage china pattern? Pull your outfit colour from that. Choose the most dominant colour, or your favourite as your main item of clothing, dress, suits etc, the next as your accessories hat, gloves, shoes etc, then the third most dominant as your highlight bracelets, earrings, shoe clips, brooch etc

You can make it easy to find the pallete of a picture by entering it into this online palette generator from degraeve.com

So basically, be brave and give it a try, even if its only a little colour, and cheer up this yucky winter weather!!
If you already have this sussed and have some great colour combos to inspire us, please share them in the comments below!

{Film Night) Charade (1963) - Audrey Hepburn & Cary Grant

This holiday season, hubby and I  have been treating ourselves to a few classic films. Arthur being a big Cary Grant fan this was one of our first films we chose, and I must say it didn't disappoint!

Billed as a Comedy - Thriller genre, Reggie Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) plays the widow of a thief who has just been murdered. She befriends Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) to help her as her husbands cronies try to find the lost loot. But is he in on it ? Who knows? 

I'm always wary of a film where hubby can guess the outcome before me, as he did with this one,  but 20 minutes later we were both proved wrong. With twists and turns all the way up to the final credits you'll be thoroughly hooked in !
,
Oodles of sassy dry wit, from both stars and plenty of comedy situations, it doesn't lack in the humour department at all!


Finally, with a backdrop of Paris , Grant's charm and Hepburn's Style this film oozes chic. 

Loved this mustard coat!

Leopard Hat anyone?

stylish spy!

I really can't recommend this film enough, its become a favourite of ours already and its a perfect lazy Sunday afternoon watch!!

{Thrifting Finds} December's haul!

With christmas and New Year posts I never got around to showing you some of my great finds from December.

Less than a  week after spying  a modern version of this set and saying to my mother 'wouldn't it be nice to have a vintage version of that' we found this in a charity shop!
I pointed it out to her in the display cabinet and promptly paid for my shopping and left (duh!). Ten minutes later the penny dropped and I went back to the shop and bought it!!!

Aren't they darling????

I'm glad we went back, because we also spied this lovely forties style suit, which mum treated me to for xmas!! Being impatient, forgetful and wanting to wear this to the watercress line event boxing day I sneaked a photo of it in the changing room! Well I needed to plan my accessories didn't I?

 

Same town different shop we found a little something for hubby. 

Having lost out on a few 40's cufflinks on ebay recently, we thought these would probably pass muster and Arthur snapped them up!

Finally, I think,  we had a 9am dash to the charity shop on xmas eve to buy a punchbowl we'd seen  (and subsequently reserved) 

As well as the punch bowl, we bought another vintage tea set (gold patterned) to coordinate with our pink roses.

we also found a perfect little hat for Martha....

I'm secretly extremely jealous of this hat and I'm plotting ways to be able to wear it myself (It goes perfectly with my cardigan!) Why oh why cant our head sizes be the same!!!?

The skirt I never thought I'd wear

 

We've all done it I'm sure, spotted that amazing bargain in the shop and bought it only to get home and find it hanging in the wardrobe unused and unloved for weeks or months after.

I bought this skirt, I think for the pricly sum of £1.75, a few months ago. Ooooh I squealed in the shop, a polka dot skirt, in my size I must have it! I'd seen lots of vintage and rockabilly girls wearing polkadots, it must be a wardrobe staple I thought!

Alas, when I got home, it didn't seem such a great buy, it clung to my lumps and bumps and I suddenly looked at the polkadot patter as 'cliche' and 'trying to hard'  and what on earth would I wear it with, my retro blouses are all patterened, my jumpers too plain, and wrong coloured!

It wasn't until the lazy days that lay inbetween xmas and new year that I reached for the skirt again, and decided I'd give it one last try before consigning it to the charity shop pile once more. With a quite home day ahead I slipped on the skirt and remembered a wrap cardi I had,  and ta - da,  although only a flavour of vintage, rather than full on retro I now had another outfit and a use for the skirt at last!!! Sometimes in the quest for wearing a vintage look I seem to overlook some rather nice little outfits, that are all a mile better than the Jeans I would have normally slung on this time last year!!

 Cardi - ebay, Skirt - thrifted, Necklace - scarlet vintage, 

Bracelet - thrifted, Lippy - Rockalily (roulette red)

What are your everyday round the house outfits?

New Year Celebrations!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a fantastic time celebrating last night? We had a meal out with family in Bath. 

A first for us we dined at the Cosy Club. I hadn't been there before so had been umming and aahing all week about what to wear!!

Looking at the website they described themselves as a modern day gin palace and the interior sounded fantastic...

"The bar area comprises of an Art Deco-inspired snug & a roomy bar area, which is dominated by an impressive gin-palace-style bar. The look is completed with leather club chairs, sink-into sofas, Art Deco coffee tables, velvet pouffes, chandeliers, & a pair of feature Art Deco uplighters (from the set of Jeeves & Wooster).
The dining area has seating for up 110 guests & a further 66 guests on the balcony. The interior is an eclectic mix of reclaimed tables, old leather dining chairs, reclaimed railway waiting room benches, old lab stools, Victorian lampshades & Eastern European factory lights. On the raised area, complete with a couple of feature antler chandeliers, the walls are adorned (literally covered) with old oil paintings & prints."

Mum & Dad

After searching online all week for a 20s dress , I gave up! Luckily I found a cute 50s style dress at 20th Century Foxy that I thought would be fun for New Year Eve. I added my enormous coral petticoat and voila, a fun but  dressy yet casual outfit for new year!

The meal was lovely, the food excellent.....

 

I did have a gorgeous Winterberry Eton Mess for dessert but scoffed it too quickly for photos! 

I could have easily sipped more of these devine Trifle Martinis instead though.....

Yum Yum

Of course I've saved the best til last..... the perk of having a dad who owns a wedding car company means that our lift for the evening was extremely stylish (even if the setting of a carpark wasn't !!)

Happy new Year everyone!!!!