A Woodlice Invasion! Oh Golly Gosh....

The last few days have involved a number of endings (some more emotional than others) and a lot of taking up carpets. 


The first of these endings was also the most emotional. I *might* have done that face-hand-flap thing in order to prevent myself from crying in front of a room full of people. Face-hand-flap inexplicably failed to stop tears, but I blamed them on the entire glass(!) of prosecco* I'd drunk before saying goodbye to two of my best friends from work (one of whom is Work Mum) who were both leaving. 


I've got just over a week left until I leave too (not that I'm counting...) and my feelings about this are actually more mixed than I expected them to be. I'm excited that I'll be (hopefully) undertaking a new and exciting role somewhere creative, but also very sad to be closing the door on a place where I've been so lucky- working with some truly lovely people who seem to really value my contribution and opinions. And there were always really good biscuits.


Other endings this week have involved finishing several projects I've been working on. I previously mentioned my friend Charlie has commissioned me to make her some cross-stitch samplers, inspired by the excellent designs of weelittlestitches. I've just finished this homage to Charlie's excellent way with words:

And finally, those of you who follow me on Twitter may already have read about this morning's woodlouse incident. On Thursday I spent what felt like hours lugging the lemon tree Tom bought me for my birthday from the back garden into the house, because it needs to be inside for winter or it will die. And, as I need it for my lemonade stand employment back-up plan, I sacrificed precious time that I could have spent eating biscuits and watching re-runs of Relocation, Relocation to move it inside. Even though it was damn heavy (shocking I know- a TREE?! Heavy?! I should tell Stephen Fry to mention it on QI...). 

I thought nothing more about it until yesterday afternoon when Tom arrived home to discover what can only be described as a Woodlouse Carnival happening in our lounge. 

He assures me he scooped them all outside without harming a single one (rather than stomping round squishing them like Godzilla) but his efforts were in vain. This morning there was a whole new party going on- a crustacean invasion! So we spent most of today pulling up carpets and spraying everything with Woodlouse Poison before they could make their way into the walls of our house and I had to spend the rest of my life picking woodlice out of my cereal. Keeping all of my fingers crossed that our ousting has worked. 

On the plus side, as we had the carpets up anyway, we decided to finally start decorating the living room. Which means that the Christmas tree Tom and I painted on the wall last year has finally gone. I'm going to miss that year-round festive feeling. 

RIP Oh Christmas Tree

*For some unknown reason I constantly confuse "prosecco" with "prosciutto". Thankfully I seem to be alone in this- as a vegetarian I wouldn't like to be presented with a celebratory glass of ham. 

Crafting, Cheesecake, and Moustaches

It's been a very busy few days for me- on Wednesday I found out I had a job interview for this morning, which included a ten minute presentation. Aside from interview prep, lots of lovely things have happened:

1. My friend Cazz came round for dinner on Wednesday night and brought the most amazing cheesecaked I've eaten in ages. Seriously delicious, and full of amazing blueberry jam. Combined with the blackcurrant topping I'm pretty sure the massive chunk I scoffed counted as one of my 5-a-day.
   
   

   

   Wild Blueberry & Blackcurrant Cheesecake- practically a fruit salad!

   
   
2. I spent Friday night at my friend Charlie's house; drinking cocktails, admiring her many patchwork blankets (which you can purchase if you ask very nicely!) and trying to contain my broodiness after spending time with her beautiful 14-month daughter, who has the biggest Bambi eyes I've ever seen! Also, she's the only person I've ever met who can make covering her face in bits of bread and plum look cute.
   
   
3. After showing Charlie a picture of my House cross-stitch, now finished, she's commissioned me to make her one of her own (as has Doll Doll Dolly- everyone's feeling the Hugh Laurie love), plus five or six others for personal appreciation and Christmas presents. 
   
   
   
   

   

   Finished "Bless This House" cross-stitch

   I need to hurry up and get my stitch on if they're going to be done in time! Luckily I've got plenty of threads to keep my fingers busy on these commissions, after I found this bargain set of 150 skeins for £20 from Argos.
   
   
   

   

   Ooh! Lookit! Lots of lovely threads.

   
   
4. My craft room (which doubles as our dining room) is coming together brilliantly, after I managed to find The Perfect Dresser in our local charity furniture shop for a bargainous £85, which is now home to my ever-expanding fabric collection. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I particularly love that the hinges look like moustaches.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. I'm going to visit my parents in a few weeks time to trawl round their local furniture shops because they're much cheaper than the ones here- my Mum is constantly bringing home amazing antique pieces that cost her £3!!! I'm after a rectangular footstool so I can cover it to look like a custard cream, after finding this footstool on hunky dory home.
   
   
   

   
   
6. I'm feeling very inspired to step up my crafting after Fran lent me her Mollie Makes magazines- I can't stop flicking through them to drool over the pictures of beautiful crafty homes. When I get the chance between cross-stitch commissions and making over my furniture I'm going to make some pretty paper swallows for my wall, and a floral pin-board so I've got somewhere to stick up inspiring pictures and tutorials I want to try. I'll most likely use Fran's easy-to-follow memo-board tutorial to get me started.
   
   
7. And finally, I went to Aldi today to buy some vegetarian wine*, and I forgot to take any ID with me. I'm pretty sure I looked so nervous due to ID-related worries I looked like a 17-year-old trying to buy some Lambrini. Very surprised the check-out guy didn't ID me as I looked so shifty. Perhaps he was afraid to in case I turned out to be even stranger than I appeared- I can't imagine they get many “normal” people buying two bottles of red, a bag of frozen peas, and a bottle of Advocaat at midday on a Monday... In my defence, I was buying the Advocaat because I want to try making Snowballs after seeing them on Nigella. And I just really like peas.

Any excuse for a pic of Nigella... Snowball cocktail far left.

*For those of you who didn't know; most wine isn't suitable for vegetarians because fish skins or gelatine are used during the fining process. Veggie wine can be tricky to find in most supermarkets, but for some unknown-yet-brilliant reason Aldi stock loads of different veggie wines for under £3.99 a bottle. Win.  

Several awesome things have happened so far today. I found a copy of Country Living on the bus (basically saving £3.80), I've been working on my House cross-stitch all crafternoon, and I've had another crafty commission. Admittedly it's from my Work Mum, who has to love everything I make because that's what Mums do, but it's nice that people want to own some of the things that I make (and who don't mind if they're covered in biscuit crumbs... crafting makes me hungry!) 

My Work Mum asked me to make her a button anklet after spotting the button friendship bracelet I was wearing (my Mum and I recently made each other matching ones because we're like eight-year-old BFFs).  

I explained "it's only buttons on a string", but she genuinely wanted me to make her one. As I seem to have surrounded myself with creative and crafty people, who can knock up an award-winning jam or beautiful cushion within minutes, I sometimes forget there are people out there who don't have a button fetish. Anyhow, that made, I've been free to continue working on my latest cross-stitch project.

I wish I could take credit for this design, but unfortunately that goes to the brilliant Steotch, who create hilarious modern samplers. I originally spotted it on Regretsy, and fell in love on first sight (who doesn't want a cross-stitch of Hugh Laurie's face? NO-ONE), but Steotch only made the one, and Regretsy Lady had bought it. I used my trusty graph paper to work out the design, and off I went. 

I'm currently having a bit of trouble with the colour blending to make his skin look right, but hopefully when it's finished it'll look real enough for people to understand the joke and wet themselves laughing. That's all I ask. 

Working from Home: The Curse of the Fridge

I imagine if the majority of people were informed they would be able to work from home two days a week, their first thought would not be "Oh, crap. I am going to put on so much weight!". But, when my boss told me this six weeks ago, that was exactly what I thought. 


You see, I used to be fat. Not need-to-join-a-club-with-a-points-system fat. Not need-to-have-an-operation fat. But I was definitely can't-squeeze-my-bum-into-h&m-trousers fat. I've read countless weight-loss stories where people were shocked into drastically changing their diet and their lifestyle after seeing a photograph of themselves looking bigger than the figure they perceived in the mirror, and I was no different. The photo that encouraged me to cut back on the cheesecake was this one. The black triangle on my skirt is my visible tights- I was literally bursting out of my outfit, because I refused to buy bigger clothes. 


My relationship with food has always been an emotional one. For a long time, I was in complete denial about my comfort-eating- something brought on by factors ranging from PMT to a bad day in the office. My eyes were finally opened when, returning home from a rather emotional breakup with Costa Boy*, I bought a family-sized Tray Bake cake and devoured it in it's entirety, whilst sobbing out the entire break-up melodrama to my housemates between mouthfuls of chocolatey crumbs. 


Food has been the constant in my life for as long as I can remember- never judgemental, always warm and comforting, and sometimes almost as delicious to look at as Joe Manganiello. To me, and my boyfriend, it's a social thing too. We made a rule no guest could leave our house without being fed- and we've managed to stick to it. I love that meals can bring people together- an idea that seems to be a universal idyll, given the amount of miles many people travel to meet up with their loved ones at Christmas, and the fact that so many best-selling cookery books are focused on "Cooking for the Family" or "Cooking with Love".


And, unfortunately, I am not a fan of exercise. Running for the bus I can just about handle, but anything that is exercise-for-exercise's-sake I simply do not enjoy. Dancing is my one exception, and that's only because I'm having such a good time bellowing out the lyrics to Starship I haven't noticed that flinging my body around the dance floor is doing healthy aerobic things to me. So, stepping up the step-ups just wasn't an option. The cake would have to be culled. 


I refused to call it a "diet", because I think labelling it as such would have caused me to feel like I wasn't allowed to eat anything unhealthy and therefore I would've ended up cracking like Comte de Reynaud in Chocolat and woken up in Choccy Woccy Doodah's shop window. I simply cut down on cake and carbs, upped my fruit and veg intake, and my trousers gradually started to feel less tight. As a vegetarian, my diet already contained a variety of vegetables, but apparently they aren't as good for you covered in cheese (who knew?!)... And, as the weight fell off, it was easier to keep eating healthily because I could see the results. 


However, it was also easy to see how people get obsessed with weight loss and can take it too far. Kate Moss's controversial comment in November 2009, claiming "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", caused a media outcry, as she was accused of encouraging teenagers to develop eating disorders. And I have to admit, for a while there, I almost agreed with Kate. I lost over 1-and- a-half stone in the space of a year- a very gradual weight-loss (due to not exercising) and one that doesn't sound that impressive to people who have lost multiple stones, but on my 5ft10 frame it made a very visible difference. 


The trouble was, when I reached a weight and size I felt comfortable with in myself again, I thought "Great! Back to the cake I go!". And unfortunately, unless I want to join the gym and actually go there, this means the weight will creep back on again. My point, with regard to working at home, is our well-stocked fridge, and our broom-cupboard larder, are right there and much harder to resist than when I'm sat in the office with my fruit bowl breakfast and soup for lunch. I'm tempted to de-camp to our shed, after reading numerous articles about home-working women converting theirs into glamorous garden-based offices, but unfortunately ours is full of lawn mowers, and a spider the size of a small dog who would probably not take very kindly to being ousted from it's house. 


Thankfully, vigorous housework seems to almost counteract the calories in a cupcake- as long as I listen to music whilst hoovering! But, with winter fast approaching, all I want to do is curl up on the sofa with a huge bowl of stew and dumplings. So I'm sending out a plea to foodies everywhere: 


If you have any advice on combining a love of food with a flat stomach please let me know! Bicep curls with baked bean tins? Calorie free cake recipes? Sausages made from flying pigs? 


And please feel free to share your own food-love or weight-loss stories below :)


*Who I'm pretty sure I only loved because he gave me free trays of Frangipans, but that is a story for another day. 

Playing Card Treasure Hunt

Yesterday I discovered a brilliant game that I suspect may become my new fave, as it is essentially a treasure hunt. It's meant to be an outdoor game, but I can't think of any reasons not to play this inside if rain threatens to stop the fun. 


To play this awesome game you need a pack of playing cards you don't mind getting covered in dirt/blancmange/whatever you hide them in.


Before the fun begins, hide two different coloured suits of cards around the house/garden/park/country (depending on how long you want the fun to last).


Deal out the remaining cards to your players, who then have to find their corresponding cards (matching colour and number e.g 2 of hearts = 2 of diamonds) as quickly as they can. The winner is the person or team who finds all their cards first.


Have any of you played this before, or do you know of any other treasure hunt games that are even better? 

Patchwork Pictures

Apologies for the shoddy photography- it appears too much caffeine means my pictures end up at a rather jaunty angle. Below are a few pics of the patchwork quilt I made last winter. It was meant to be a Christmas quilt, hence the red-and-green theme, but it is good for snuggling up under all year round :)

I decided a plain back would be too boring, so I appliquéd on triangles of fabric to look like strings of bunting. It's definitely one of the craft projects I am most proud of so far.