Nana nana nana nana, batman!!!

Do you remember me saying I had a bunch of bananas languishing in the fruit bowl that needed something doing with them? Well, this is what I came up with - banana bread! As far as I can remember I've not made it before, so I had a quick search through my cookbooks and found this recipe for chocolate banana bread from the Great British Bake Off cookbook, published last year (I've been given the new one as well, but haven't used it yet).
 

 
Armed with my ingredients and a new loaf tin courtesy of Mr Tescos, I came home from work on Saturday night, got straight into my pyjamas, shoved my dinner in the oven and got baking!
 

 
It was a nice and quick and most importantly easy recipe to make - always a good thing when you're baking after work on a Saturday night and are pretty much brain dead.
 

 
I was fairly impressed with the outcome too, although I found it quite hard to judge when it was done, so it could possibly have done with another 5 minutes in the oven. Why do fan ovens always have to complicate things so? Do you turn down the temperature and bake for the same time? Or do you set it at the temperature stated in the recipe and take it out sooner? I soon discovered that the good old skewer test wasn't going to work - no matter how many times you stab the poor thing with a stick, the little lumps of chocolate and banana mean that it will never 'come out clean'!
 

 
I also made a slight schoolgirl error in putting it into a Tupperware box all wrapped up when it was still a bit warm, but luckily I realised before too much condensation built up!
 

 
I was rather proud of it actually and it seemed to go down very well with everyone at work. This is definately one I'll be making again!
 

Happy Holloween,

aLittleBlonde

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Twitter - to split or not to split?

In writing this post this afternoon and then finding this post on UK Craft Blog I've decided to leave things as they are on twitter, with the exception of changing my Twitter name to aLittleBlonde and planing to make more use of lists and direct messages to organise things a bit better. So... this is me!

Follow @aLittleBlonde1

But, if you're interested in what I had to say earlier, then read on...

This is something I've been wondering about for a while now and The Pampered Sparrow's post the other day got me wondering about it again - how much do I want to share? At the moment I only have one twitter account that serves both me and aLittleBlonde. Although that makes things easier to manage, it does mean that my tweets, people I follow and interactions with others are somewhat mixed between me talking with friends, choir stuff, the things I get up to every day and things going on with aLittleBlonde.

On the internet I like to keep things fairly anonymous as aLittleBlonde. I'm not hiding my 'real-life' name/face, but I'm not particularly publicising it either - to be honest I can't decide quite how much I want to share. How much do I want aLittleBlonde to be directly traceable to me? (especially when you take potential future employers into account!). Hopefully you won't find many direct references to the 'real' me, not that she's really any different to aLittleBlonde, although I do hint every now and then and talk about where I live rather a lot - just have a look at my tags to see what I mean!

So what's my point? Well, there are many different strands to what makes me me - there's the third year psychology student, the daughter of two incredibly musical parents, the friend, the choir girl  the school friend  the employee of a big high street store I'm not allowed to mention, the potential future teacher and graduate, the crafter and of course aLittleBlonde. Most of that gets summed up anonymously (unless you know me personally and make the connection) in aLittleBlonde and there isn't a defining line where one begins and the other ends. At the moment my twitter page is both me and aLittleBlonde and I'm not overly sure whether to leave it that way or split things up a bit. Apart from anything else, my twitter feed must seem rather random to my followers sometimes!

So is it time to make the split - one twitter account for me and one for aLittleBlonde? There's just a couple of things holding me back - for a start how on earth do I split myself in two? Do I need to? What if there's something I want to say through both my personal twitter account and aLittleBlonde - do I copy and paste, retweet myself...? What about those who follow both?

Well done if you've managed to make it to the end of this rather wordy post! Please do let me know if you've got any thoughts. What do you think - to split or not to split?

Happy Tuesday, 

aLittleBlonde

That Friday Feeling

Apologies, yet again this failed to post when it should have. What gives blogger? Anyway...

Yep, you've got it, today I've got that Friday feeling. Just where exactly has this week gone? I remember selected highlights from my day off on Monday and my high-speed shopping trip on Wednesday, but aside from that its all just blurred into one. In fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out this week was actually only 3 days long! My dad has a theory about extending and condensing time, maybe I'll tell you about it some time. After all he is one of life's great pontificators!

It's scary to think that next week will be week 7 for Sussex students. That's half way through the autumn term of my final year! Although scary, I'm reaching the point now where I just want to get on with it and speeding through this year is absolutely fine by me! Bring. It. On.

I have so many little snatches of things to tell you and no time to do so before I find more to talk about over the next two weeks (there are exciting things afoot!). So, it appears we are heading for a bit of a Friday mashup - are you ready?

The C word.
I am desperately trying to be a good girl and not mention the C word until at least after bonfire (it's a big deal where I live - just do a google image search for Lewes bonfire), but trust me I am finding it really, really hard. I've got craftiness and new projects a plenty to be telling you about, but I'm being very strict with myself and holding off until November, at which point I shall probably explode like a veritable festive glitter ball. Although to be fair, there'll be so much going on here between now and the beginning of November that I doubt I'd have time to show you an awful lot of what I've been up to c-word wise anyway!

Although I will give you a couple of sneaky peaks of preparations...

Aren't the evenings beginning to get really dark now? I've been trying really hard recently to plan out stuff I need to get done and work efficiently through the day so I can get a bit of time off in the evenings. That's all well and good, but that often means that by the time I eventually get round to blogging its too dark to take decent photos and when it's light enough I'm inevitably busy! I fear more organisation is in order. Either that or a non-energy saving lightbulb.

As I've already alluded to, the next 2 weeks are going to be busy. I've got my dissertation project to finishing planning, an ethics form to submit, bonfire and my mother is coming to stay. There are also several over-ripe bananas languishing in the fruit bowl that need making into something. It's either going to be very quiet around here or you won't be able to get rid of be because I've got so much to say!

I had thought I'd tell you about my little speed-shopping trip on Wednesday  but I think I've kind of said enough for one day. Instead I shall write that up and schedule it to post automatically over the weekend. Ooh get me. Let's see how that one turns out!

Happy Friday, 

aLittleBlonde

Songs of Praise Big Sing

Just a quick post today to say that I was on TV at the weekend. Yes, you heard it right! I'm a member of the Brighton Festival Chorus, who for the last couple of years have been invited by BBC Songs of Praise to take part in the Big Sing as one of their 3 stage choirs for the event.

It's always a great experience and really interesting to see how the programmes are made and what Aled Jones and the guests for that episode are like when the cameras aren't rolling. And yes, I can confirm that Aled was his usual bouncy self and Jaz Ellington (from the BBC's The Voice) seemed like a genuinely lovely person from where we were sat. As for Alfie Boe? Well, BFC have worked with Alfie before, which I'll tell you about when I get a spare moment, and he too was as lovely and ever so slightly mischievous as normal.

At the recording day back in September we filmed two episodes - this one aired on Sunday and one scheduled for some time between Christmas and new year, making a change from the usual one episode for the Big Sing and one episode for Christmas. Although I'm personally a really big fan of anything Christmas, it was nice to have a break from singing Carols in September this year, although the switch over in the break between recordings is always funny as Christmas trees and festive jumpers appear whist the stage choirs are urged to don a bit of sparkle to get in the festive mood.

Some students have festival wristbands,
I have a songs of praise one.

So if you watched it at the weekend or fancy stalking me on the iplayer before it disappears, I'm in the stage choir so dressed in black concert dress, early twenties (ouch it hurts to say that!), long blond hair... or you could just fast forward to 22:26 if you're that desperate.

It always makes me laugh that if you mention songs of praise at BFC one of the first things anyone will say is something along the lines of "and they give you lunch, nice sandwich, crisps, a bit of fruit, bottle of water and a kitkat. And tea and biscuits in the break". it's true musicians do love their food...

Apologies, this post was somewhat longer than intended and pretty much picture-less, but I had a feeling the BBC wouldn't be too pleased if I started print-screening directly from iPlayer and then posting it on here!

Happy Wednesday,

aLittleBlonde

If you want to know more about Brighton Festival Chorus then take a look at our website or you can follow us on twitter

Ta Dah! Mini mystery stitch #1

Here we have one of the many posts I wrote over the summer that for one reason or another never quite made it to publishing. Instead it has been sat languishing in the notes app on my ipad, written but picture-less for several weeks months. So if you can, forget the rain beating on the window outside and cast your mind back to the summer...

At last, a little ta dah - my mini mystery stitch that I've been working on whilst travelling between Dorset and Sussex every week (I last wrote about it in this post here) No one guessed what it was, so I am proud to reveal that it was this little guy... Mr Bumble.

I'm not a massive fan of backstitching on such small designs as the spider's web of lines on the chart can often be quite hard to translate into real stitches. But, despite a few little corners (copied from the chart I swear!) I was actually pretty pleased with my backstitching efforts - especially the stripes. Three stitches on each side of each stripe. Of course it was a happy accident entirely intentional on my part and planned in advance (ahem).

It's also the first time I've attempted french knots. I'd heard so much dislike for them that I was a little apprehensive, having always opted for the seed bead option instead. But, after two failed and unravelled attempts I got the hang of it. They came out a little bigger than intended, but I think it gives him a rather cute boggle-eyed look which adds to his character.

He's from the free stitch kit that came with issue 252 of Cross Stitcher magazine and belongs in the same set as my poor incomplete strawberry...

...except the poor incomplete strawberry is incomplete no more!

I couldn't face unpicking the whole thing to start again with a different red and didn't want to throw my work away, so I decided to buy a skein of anchor in the shade specified in the key. I was resigned to the fact that it would be blatantly obvious I had switched threads, but as the birthday I had intended to make it for had already passed in the meantime I decided to go with it and just keep it for myself.

As you can see it wasn't actually that bad a match though! If you look closely and you know what you're looking for then you can see it - the anchor is slightly brighter, has a bit more of a sheen and is much nicer to work with, but apart from that its similar enough. I'd never give it away to anyone because I'm a perfectionist, but I'm sure I can find some use for it somewhere. At the moment it's acting as bookmark in my philosophy of psychology textbook!

Happy Wednesday,

aLittleBlonde xx

 

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Instagram - A month in pictures

I am now on Instragram! You can follow me at @alittleblonde1 to see what I'm up to, click here or on the button in the sidebar to find out more. (By the way, isn't that followgram thing cool? I have a QR code!!)

Since joining instagram I've found myself taking a lot more photos which is a nice little bonus in my book. If only my poor old iphone didn't struggle so much to open the camera app every time I want to take a photo. It really is a little frustrating to have to wait about 90 seconods every time you want to take a photo, especially when the subject in question is poised to run away and moves at the last minute...

This little guy (there is a squirrel in that bin  promise you!) was so cute and patiently sat still for so long whilst I waited for my camera to boot up. You can't really blame him for getting a little camera shy and diving for cover at the last minute really, can you? I don't know what it is, but there seem to be even more squirrels than usual on campus at the moment. Anyway, I digress...

I would like to announce a new feature to aLittleBlonde - monthly instagram mosaics! So here we have it- this is what I've been up to in the days since joining instagram...

Running from the top left: a Bakewell tart complete with heart shaped cherry l peppers harvested from the garden l my version of burger and chips l my new parsley plant on the kitchen windowsill l rainbow seen from y bedroom window l portobello mushroom burger with pesto & mozzarella l a little photo shoot with a very squishy doggy l they make Percy Pig Juice! l my house mate made enchiladas for dinner l Gloria chilling again l a little shopping trip into Brighton by train l this dog could sleep for England

I apologise that it's taken me until the 11th to post these up, as opposed to doing so at the beginning of the month. However, as you may have seen I was a little preoccupied with all the loveliness!

Are you on instagram too? If so feel free to comment with your username or a link and I'll give you a little follow back.

Happy Thursday, 

aLittleBlonde xx

Twenty-One

This week I've celebrated a bit of a mile-stone birthday - the big two-one. Well, when I say celebrated, I mean more attempted to ignore it. 21 really was not a birthday I was looking forward to, in fact I have been dreading it for the last couple of weeks. However, 1 week in and I can confirm that the world did not indeed end as I thought it would. Indeed, being 21 and 1 week is not actually that much different from being 20 - who's have thought it? I would even go as far as saying I like the idea of being 21 (just as long as I don't get any older!) it's got a little grown-up sparkle to it that I quite like.

Anyway, I had a lovely time at the weekend with the 'surprise' party my Mum and Auntie Flute threw for me. 'Surprise' because I accidentally let myself in on the secret several weeks beforehand, but that's another story.

There was much bunting, cake and an abundance of embarrassing photographs and lovely people there to share it which made me a very happy girl. I have also commandeered the decorations and photographs for safe keeping, just in case.

The beautiful rose from the top of my cake which I'm saving

Whilst I'm telling you about it I would like to take the opportunity to say a big, well earned thank you to my Mum and Auntie Flute (and of course my Dad!) for arranging such a lovely surprise. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank everyone, especially my Mum and Dad for giving me such lovely presents - I feel absolutely spoilt rotten!!! This year was definitely the year of the craft/cook book which will keep me amused and well fed for years to come. I really cannot wait to share some of the amazing books I received this week with you, but for now I shall just leave you with a couple of photographs unearthed from this weekend...

See, I was a cutie once...I wonder what happened!

Happy Tuesday,

aLittleBlonde xx

Edit: I just worked it out, turns out I'm only really 18 plus VAT :)