I am soooo over winter now.....

.....I'm fed up with the cold icy rain, the dark gloomy skies, the wind chill factor of -22⁰ (okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration!)  I love a cold and frosty winter, but only when there are blue skies.  
With all this cold weather, I decided that two things were most definitely needed:

1.  Some flowers to add some much needed colour.  I absolutely love daffodils and I don't think any other flower makes me feel quite so happy:

Open up little flowers - you know you want to!

 2.  Some homemade baking.  So I made some orange/choc chip brownies (which are always a firm fave in our house) and a banana and chocolate loaf

Supply has much depleted now!

This was absolutely delicious and I will certainly make again!

Thank you to At Home with Mrs M for the chocolate and banana loaf recipe.  The only change I made was to use less ripe bananas, as I don't like a very strong banana taste.

As Sunday was such a wash-out (no way I was going out in that weather!) I shut myself away in my craft room with some CDs and cracked on with some jewellery making.


I'm really into making shamballa style bracelets right now and am trying to increase my stock in the hope of some summer sales.  I prefer making the smaller bracelets (middle picture) but think the larger ones will be more popular, as they're more like the styles in the shop.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of using all shamballa beads on these bracelets as I think it looks a bit OTT, and I like using a variety of colours and textures in my jewellery making.

I'm going to make a few of the smaller ones using different colour cord.  I've already got some in royal blue, but I think I'm going to get some green and red cord too.

I also need to get round to making quite a few leather bead wrap bracelets.  Those, along with memory wire bracelets, are my best sellers.

And in the evening, I managed to get a bit more done on my cardigan while watching 'Marple'.  
I'll watch this new series if it's on, but the fantastic Joan Hickson is the only Miss Marple for me!

 So, all in all, quite an industrious weekend!

Baking and knitting

Here we are in 2013!  I hope you all had a great New Year.  HP and I just had a meal at home and then watched the local fireworks at midnight.  We had a lovely festive week together, just the two of us.  It was the first Christmas we'd ever spent alone so it was very special.

I had a busy day yesterday.  I cracked open the Brownie Maker that HP got me for Crimbo

I love the logo!

Oh well, if you insist!

and made some chocolate and orange brownies, and I have to say they are delicious!

 

A big batch for everyone at work

 These brownies would look fab on the great gift I got from my Secret Santa at work - a gorgeous porcelain two-tier cake stand!  Someone at work obviously knows me very well indeed!  I absolutely love it!

 

I'm sure like me, many of you have recipes scribbled on bits of paper or printed off the internet.  I've been meaning for ages to collate all of these into one recipe book, so I'm not always searching for scrap bits of paper.  I found this lovely book in Paperchase on sale!

 

There are plenty of recipe pages and ingredients cards.  There's even a section on Dinner Party Planning!  I hope to get all my recipes added before the end of this month.  That's one of my first New Year goals!

 One of the others is to finish my King Cole Galaxy Chunky jumper.  I've just got the front to do now and I started that yesterday and got quite a bit done......

The lighting is rather poor, so it doesn't do the colour justice

 ....admittedly, I did spend a few hours in front of the TV, but hey, it was a holiday!

I got a great book of Knitted Boot Cuffs for Crimbo from HP too, so I must make a few of these:

I like the simple but chunky boot cuffs

Loving the pigs

Hope you've all had a crafty start to the New Year!