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