Summer, picnics and ginger beer, leapfrog and hopscotch...

Ah the long days of summer, picnics and ginger beer, leapfrog and hopscotch...

Ok, so here in the UK summer so far has been pants! This was a rare sunny evening at Granny's where shunning the TV they went outside and played :) 

Summer went on forever when I was a kid, hopscotch drawn on the road in the turning circle was my game of choice, if I wasn't off den building with my brother (pretending to be swallows and amazons or the famous 5!)  What were your favourite childhood summer games / memories?

All this rain has meant I've had plenty of time inside sewing, you can check out my creations at  here or here

Lil Vintage Makes is  also on Facebook and Twitter too

I'd be ever so chuffed if you could join me!!!

The Longest Day

 

Yesterday was the longest day of the year! A fact I was unaware of as I wrote out my To Do List...

I gardened, transplanting plants into our new veggie patch at home...

I was serenaded by my friendly blackbird...

The bees buzzed around me....

I baked...

Updated the photos of my bags for my folksy shop...

 I even found myself thinking of xmas...Oops!



 Phew!  How did you fill your longest day?

Pyrex & Rhubarb Pudding

Yesterday I  brought these little lovelies home.

 I spied them in the window of my local thrift shop and thought they would make darling little bowls for crumbles (rather than the 'soup' bowls they were labelled as).

The design isn't my normal colour choice but its the exact one my mum so I couldn't say no!

When I got home I wanted to use them straight away, and, spying the overflowing pot of eggs from our chicken I changed the crumble in my mind to sponge and along with the rhubarb hubby brought back from the allotment the day before, i devised a recipe for Rhubarb Pudding

Rhubarb Pudding

You will need:

3 sticks of Rhubarb

2 eggs

125g Self Raising Flour (1 cup)

125g Sugar (1/2 cup) + extra sugar to sweeten rhubarb if desired

125g Butter - room temperature

Preheat Oven to  175C

Begin by pre cooking the rhubarb until slightly softened,chop and microwave for 5 - 8 minutes or heat on stove.

Strain off liquid from rhubarb and discard.

Spoon rhubarb into base of Pyrex dish(s) sprinkling with a little sugar to sweeten if required

In a bowl cream sugar and butter together.

One by one add eggs to the bowl and mix.

Sieve flour and stir into the sponge mixture.

Stir until combined.
Spoon mixture over rhubarb, and level off.
Place in oven an cook for 30 minutes until sponge cooked thoroughly and golden.


Serve hot  - delicious with a scoop of ice cream

Some rather exciting news....

Also the reason I've been quiet for so long!

I can finally reveal I have jumped into the World of Business and started my own business. Phase one is now up and running...

Visit it here

I have always loved to create, combine that with my love for vintage and you get 'Lil Vintage Makes'. From Bunting hand cut from vintage Ladybird books and strung on twine or crochet trim and tape, to bags made from handpicked vintage or vintage inspired fabrics, and lots inbetween, you can guarantee a nostalgic treat for young ones or those who just 'remember the days'....

So all of my time has been taken up, designing and sewing, not to mention the business side!! Now would you like to see picture of the paperwork or the sewing?

Silly question....

There has been non stop doodling!

 ....Careful sewing!

 ....Selection of fabrics

....and rather fun photo shoots!

And that al goes on even before I get near listing it in my shop!

I'm not sure how much this blog will be affected. I've started up another blog for the business which should showcase all the new designs and the work behind them, but as its part of my everyday life now, I guess they'll be a little more 'sewing bits' in my posts over here too. 

I hope you all agree its pretty exciting news, I'd love to know what you think...

A Day of Olympic Proportions....

Okay, so I hinted before that we'd had a bit of an Olympic Day in May Here it is in all its glory. As you know, I live near the spendid City of Bath, and a couple of weeks ago the children were given time off school to go and see the Olympic Flame as it made its way through the city, we were also given the opportunity to take part in a World Record Attempt to form the World Largest Olympic Rings. We were assigned Blue and along with Nanny, we headed off to the Victoria Park! 

The day was fantastic, amazing blue skies, and such a relaxed family festival type feel. The children were great, there was ALOT of waiting around and practising, so we climbed trees and ate picnics. 

You can see a time-lapse video of the whole thing here

So that was the morning...we headed over to the Guildhall and claimed our place to watch the torch go past later. We were so lucky and had a spot quite near the front with a stunning backdrop of the Abbey. Finally when we had sat through all of the sponsors vehicles, the flame arrived!!

All in all and spectacular day I'm glad we took part in!! How about you, did you see the flame?

{How to Guide} Vintage Jelly Moulds and How to Turn out a Jelly!!

Image Source

I bet you've all wanted perfect Jellys like the ones above haven't you? No problem! You just need to pop to the antique market/ car boot sale / Granny's house and pick up  one of those darling glass moulds you've spied right? 


You'll probably leave it til the day before the party too yes? Make a packet up and turn it out onto your plate just before the guests arrive perfect housewife style! Umm no. 

I bought a lovely fluted jelly mould on my last trip to Devon and couldn't wait to use it! I knew they were tricky so i did a bit of research and greased the glass inside with veg oil before filling with jelly. It didn't work. In fact it didn't work so badly that the centre of the jelly plopped out whilst the outside clung to the edges still *grr* Take two , and a lot of research later I came up with the ultimate guide to turning out Jelly from a glass mould...


1. Wet the mould before pouring the jelly in, (swirling some water around the mould then emptying out should be enough)


2. mixing the jelly at 1 and 1/2 tablets to a pint of water instead of 1 tablet per pint. 


3. When you want to turn out the jelly dip the mould into boiling water for 20 seconds first. 


4. you might need to run a knife around the rim to release the top edge! 


5. Don't forget to wet the plate you are turning it out onto so you can adjust it to centre positon!! 


Hope that helps you achieve your perfect vintage jellies, if not and you still want that mould in your life...Give up - and get one of these lovelies....

Candles

Lights

What I did in May....

You'll have to forgive me for the lack of posts recently, I've been working on a little special something! You'll have to wait for the official announcement on that, but if you can't wait you go like my page over on facebook and you'll get lots of pictures of it all coming together....

Meanwhile hers a few photos of what I got up to in May...

Cooling off in the scorching weather....

Preparing for the Queen's Jubilee, i'm loving all of the 50s styling out and about in the shops at the moment - i hope it doesn't all disappear again after too quickly!

 Parties and celebrations at School - practicing my face painting for daughters Jubilee mufti Day!

 Being Blue - no not like that! We took part in a record breaking attempt of the World's largest Human olympic rings display in Bath.

Welcoming the new season, with lots of Summery (homemade) goodies!!

Gardening - Enjoying the flowers and Digging a new Veggie Patch in the garden...

While others merely watched!!

Family Picnics - this one was enjoyed at the Vintage Nostalgia Show, Wilts.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing what we got up to, i'll blog a little more in depth on a couple of them soon, but its half term here, and we're off on our holidays so you'll have to wait.......again. (sorry!)

There might be some updates here if you're lucky