Ode to an Aunt

More indulgence with my temporary internet. I thought I would use the occassion to point to my very clever Auntie who has been the source for my love of sewing. She is super creative, and not only is highly skilled at all forms of sewing from dressmaking to curtain making to embroidery, but can also paint and draw very well, and furthermore is very good at interior design. Here's a little taster of her creative flair from our wedding. First of all she made the beautiful bridesmaid dresses for my wedding. Let me reassure you all, they were NOT easy to make and I felt very guilty at times for asking her to make them, especially as they were boned and one of the bridesmaids kept losing a little bit of weight.

Aren't they gorgeous dresses (and bridesmaids)?!? The next thing she made for our wedding was a surpise gift, and even my new hubby (who is not easily impressed) was bowled over at how delicate and beautiful it was, and here it is....

It's a beautiful ring cushion. The photo does not give it justice as to how delicate it is.

Finally, here is the talented woman herself in her homemade dress which she made for our wedding, dancing with her lovely hubby.

Hurrah for my lovely Aunt, Val!

Goodbye Derbyshire....

I have temporary internet for the weekend! Whoopee! Before I start giving you all the crafty and beautiful details of our wedding I wanted to share the walk I had to work on my last day. To fill you in a little I did live in the heart of the Peak District, and on my last day I decided to walk half the way as it was such a beautiful morning plus it was some exercise to keep the pounds off in the weeks running up to the wedding. I'm a real country bumpkin at heart and love nothing more than wandering through fields in my flip flops and pretty skirts in the summer. I have a lot of sympathy with the wonderful Julie Andrews as she wanders round singing the hills are alive, and on my last day of work, corny as it may sound, it felt like the Derbyshire countryside had awoken in all it's glory to give me a good send off, either that or make me miss it even more!

Anyway, here are a few pics of the beautiful morning walk I had.

Be back soon.....

Sorry I've been away for a while but I've been off getting married/being on honeymoon and I may be gone a while longer till we get internet in our new flat, so for now will give you a preview of our big day...

Seven

Eek! Was very excited that my new blogging friend Katie from Australia tagged me in her blog this week to get me to answer the following seven questions. So here we go....

1. What book(s) are you currently reading right now?

'Handle With Care' by Jodi Picoult. My Aunt got me into Jodi Picoult just over a year ago and I love love love her books! She writes about some really contemporary and difficult issues for instance 'designer babies' or children born with illnesses, as is this case with this book. She looks at the situation from all perspectives and writes really beautifully and descriptively, and writes each of the chapters of the book from the perspective of a different character in the book. The other nice thing for me in the mad rush towards my wedding in 11 days (yey!), is her books are nice and easy reading. They may be heavy in topic, but her writing style is as light as a feather.

Image from monkeyread.wordpress.com/

2. Whats your favourite song ever - or just right now?

This is a ridiculously hard question as I love music and have a silly amount stored in my itunes, furthermore my favourite music tends to vary with my mood or where I generally am in life. However, I shall name a few (bit of a cheat I know....sorry!). One of them has to be 'Read My Mind' by The Killers- it has an awesome beat and it's all melty (that's not a real word I know) and echoey which I love in music. Another has to be 'Got to Be Real' by Cheryl Lynn- makes me dance around the room everytime and feel very womanly. At the moment I also really love 'Free Fallin' by John Mayer as he has such a great voice and the song is lovely and mellow sounding- perfect for summer evenings.

3. Whats the best piece of advice (funny or sweet) that anyone has ever given you?

I once read this (rather than it being given to me) advice from Theodore Roosevelt which says 'Do what you can, with what you have, where you are' (or something very similar). I'm a neurotic, hard working, perfectionist and will often go mad if I feel something isn't as it should be plus I always like to be busy and feel guilty if I haven't spent enough time with people or on a piece of work or something similar. Therefore this advice is really important to me, as it made me think about doing what I can rather than what I feel I should in order to be super woman (which I think women of our generation are sometimes made to feel we should be). I think the 'with what you have' includes talents/skills as well as time too meaning not that you can necessarily just do your best, but you can only do your best with what you have (which sometimes means not enough time or resources or energy!)

4. What is the one place that you really want to visit that you haven't been to before?

I'd love to go to Egypt for one (though I adore travelling so there are lots of places I really want to visit), as I love history and even did a paper on university which included studying a bit of Ancient Egyption religion which was ridiculously interesting. My ideal trip there would be to spend 2 weeks on a old school cruise boat and stopping off in the day visiting the pyramids, riding on camels, going to the old temples and palaces, and walking round museums in Cairo. All this would be topped off by candlelit meals on the boat in the evening, how very colonial sounding I am :S

5. What is your most embarassing moment?

Oh goodness! Where do I begin?!? I'm naturally clumsy and sometimes quite socially awkward too I think so I often end up having lots of them. One of them would have to be hiccupping REALLY LOUDLY in the middle of prayers on Easter Sunday at Church. It literally echoed and then you could hear everyone turning around to look at my beetroot coloured face.

Another would be blurting out 'honeymoon' instead of the word 'honey' to what was then my new boyfriend, but who is now my fiance so that wasn't too much of a disaster!

6. What is one of your favourite family traditions you have?

I like the fact that we all have special names for one another in our family. Like my Mum calls me Beckski and I call her Mumski, my Dad calls me Chicken and I call him Turkey, my cousin calls me Boggy and I call him Toggy back! It's all a bit geeky but I think it's kinda cute!

I also love the fact that whenever one of us has a birthday in our family, we all pile onto that persons bed in the morning with our presents and have a cup of tea whilst the birthday girl/boy opens up all their pressies.

7. What is something fun and inspiring you have seen online lately and would like to share with us all?

I've not found many crafty/vintagey/pretty blogs done by people in the UK yet, but I've recently stumbled on a blog called Junkaholic . The lady who does this blog looks like she can do wonders with bits of 'junk', which I particularly like as a)I'm getting married on a budget soon and need inspiration for cheap finds and b)I'm moving with my hubby to be into our first house soon and therefore need inspiration for more cheap finds to make my house beautiful. Plus her home is so cute and she's also done a post about the Isle of Wight where I went last summer which is so beautiful and made me all nostalgic.

A beautiful end to single life

So in just over three weeks my single life ends, and I go from being a Miss to a Mrs. On the 3rd of July I get to celebrate the becoming a Mrs, but last weekend I got to celebrate how much fun life as a single gal has been. The day was so wonderful I felt I had to do it justice by blogging about it.

To fill you in the whole day was a complete surprise for me. All I was told was that I needed to be ready by 11.20 a.m. and I should dress 'Sex and the City' stylee.

So we started off the day with a gorgeous champagne bruch at a gorgeous restaurant called The Walnut Club. The food was so beautifully presented, and it tasted as delicious as it looked.

We then a some time before the next part of my hen (which I still had no idea about), so we ventured into Sheffield's Botanical Gardens which in the warm summer sunshine, looked gorgeous. We spent the whole afternoon bathing in the sun, looking round the greenhouses, drinking beautiful white wine and chatting. My 'hens' had also bought me some lovely little gifts including some treats for my honeymoon :) and some herb labels (eek I'm becoming a housewife before I know it! Ha ha!)

The main treat of the day was to come next at the most amazing little shop that I had never heard about (and it's perhaps a good job I hadn't for my bridal diet's sake) called Fancie. My hen's had arranged a champagne afternoon tea and cupcake decorating....talk about being in heaven! The shop was decked in cute china, ornaments and trinkets which I could have spent all my savings on if anyone had let me. The tables were also decorated to perfection with vintage looking china, Cath Kidston tablecloths, cake stands of cupcakes ready to decorate and to top it off, little Babysham glasses, which were so uncool and retro they became quaint and oh so cool (especially when filled with champagne). So we spent the next 3 hours supping champagne, decorating cupcakes, and eating cupcakes, sandwiches with the crusts cut off and scones with jam and cream! Bliss! To top it all off this was with the company of some of my oldest and closest friends and family, who made me feel so special.

Next comes the less quaint part of the night which all started with a quiz which was sent to my fiance first, for me to then guess his answers. This left me rather rosy cheeked at times in front of my mother. I was then presented with a naughty nurses outfit to wear for the rest of the evening which I dutifully did, and apparently absolutely pulled off! With our tummys full of champagne and delicious treats we headed back to The Walnut Club which at night was terribly glamarous and chic, and ridiculously fabulous with Cosmolitans galore and the most fantastic live jazz band.

Needless to say I went home very merry, and woke up the next day beaming.

If any of my hens read this, thank you for what I can only describe as a perfect day.

This week I....

Well it's all been a bit of a whirlwind this week, with the good and the bad. However, perhaps it's a bit of a copy of other people, but I've seen how lovely other bloggers often write a list of what they've done with an acknowledgement that they're all good things, and things to be thankful for. Since I've been very good at moaning recently, I thought it'd be good for me to make such a list, with a picture or two to illustrate the lovely week I've had.

So this week I've...

Had a gorgeous barbeque with good family friends which included yummy delights such a grilled salmon and white chocolate and apricot bread and butter pudding

Picked this peony from the garden as it was hidden amongst other plants (what a waste) and enjoyed having it round the house all week.

Had my first wedding dress fitting and got to see my dress for the first time since November...how exciting!

Spent a day with my lovely friend Jenny, whom despite knowing her for so long, I've had few chances to spend some quality time with her.

Had a two day working week, bliss!

Cooked the nicest Thai prawn curry I've ever cooked, and I got to share it with my bridesmaid Katie over a glass of Pimms.

Photo from Flickr by London looks

Spent a day shopping with my bridesmaid Katie for honeymoon goodies and bought a beautiful maxi dress(along with half the other stuff in the shops).

Had the most gorgeous hen party (for any Americans who by some small chance might be reading this, that's a bridal shower to you) I could have wished for, and enjoyed the privilege of having my closest friends around me spoiling me rotten. There will be more details and photos of this as it was so beautiful it is worth at least one or two posts by itself.

Had my first two comments on my blog, which I was ridiculously excited about.

An ingenious solutuion....

For those who are reading my blog for the first time, you won't know that I'm getting married. One problem I've been trying to solve for a while is a stylish but relatively cheap way of displaying the table names/numbers for the wedding breakfast. Although in the big picture of things paying £3 per table to a clip of some sort wasn't a massive cost, by sheer stubborness, I felt it wrong to pay £36 for things which simply give some elevation to a table name. Therefore I thought and I researched as much as I could, until by chance a brilliant website called All About You had an idea for Mother's Day of homemade photo stand which is also perfect for my needs. So here is my attempt......

If you fancy having a go yourself, they are really simple. The instructions are as follows;

1) Cut 2 x 75cm lengths of 2mm-thick aluminium wire.
2) Bend the wire around a chunky knitting needle or pen to make a circle in the centre of each piece.
3) Put the pieces together and bend into a heart shape. Twist the wires together for about 4-5cm.
4) Trim the ends and then spread the ends out and curl each end around a knitting kneedle or pen to finsh the base off.

Make your own cupcake stand

I've just seen this idea for a gift on a beautiful blog called Giver's Log which features some fantastic ideas and some amazing tutorials. I adore cupcake stands and I think I'm going to be lucky enough to own a Wedgewood Polka Dot Tea Story stand post wedding, but I think it would be so lovely to be able to own a completely unique stand, and if I had a drill I'd be straight on with making this.

Picture from giverslog.com

Cheers!

I just had to share the wonderful present that was given to a friend of mine for their wedding by a mutual friend. The mutual friend has a talent for beer brewing and last year brewed all the beer for my university college's ball. For my friend's wedding, he then went and brewed a personalised ale for the bride and groom which you could have a bottle of at the reception. He even put homemade labels on the bottles and made the below posters with a witty description of the two ales! How very original and talented of him!

A red success?!?

Ignore the model and slightly insane lipstick but I wanted to put on one my greater sewing successes. I made this red dress for a friends wedding using a prima pattern and some red jersey. It looked simple to start with but putting in a collar and sleeves (which I'd never done before) turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. Furthermore other sewers will know that stretchy materials can be a nightmare to work with. I found the trick is to keep the material nice and taught but that might be completely the wrong way to do it!

I really had to burn the midnight oil to get this done as well as I've been super busy with wedding planning, and I even ended up on the train to London cutting off bits of thread and neatening seams with a rather large pair of fabric scissors. How I didn't get them confiscated I'll never know, I must have looked like a mad woman!