Killing Time With The Internet

Killing Time With The Internet

So have you ever been in the sort of mood where nothing quite works? Doing work doesnt work for you, gaming or reading, nope. I even made some nice cupcakes. Still was feeling restless.

So what did I end up doing in this mood of annoyance. I started browsing the weirdest sites on the internet and eventually stumbled across this:


http://www.theuselessweb.com/


if you go to this you can end up in a few weird places for example:

http://www.koalastothemax.com/ 

http://www.sanger.dk/

http://chickenonaraft.com/

http://www.hristu.net/

http://isitchristmas.com/

http://cat-bounce.com/


Slightly relevant if you are a Futurama fan:   http://r33b.net/ 


I think my overall favorite from all of this time killing and browsing has to be  this 

http://anasomnia.com

and http://producten.hema.nl/?whatthefark  (don't touch the cup)

All of the websites are safe, I promise and there you go a inside you never asked for into one of my least productive evenings EVER. Im off to go watch YouTube in bed with my hot water bottle and look forward to tomorrow when I have actual plans with other human beings.

As always thanks for reading (hope you are having a better night that me)

Happy Birthday Nancy!

Happy Birthday Nancy! 

So today is a special day, today is my yummy mummy's birthday! 

Hopefully she will not kill me for putting a load of photos of her on my blog. We can hope. 

So yes in lieu of a card I am doing a birthday blog post for nutty nurse mother. 

So currently I am in my new place in Portsmouth with the Hayden, and the rest of the Porter clan are in sunny Dubai. (totally not missing home and the heat, I do so love wearing thick rugby socks in September) So the point is I am not able to be there in person, and sending a card alone, no presents is a postage nightmare, so instead this is my birthday blog post for Nancy the Awesome.  

So this is the Nancy

Browsing through her facebook I found a few choice, lovely pictures of her:

And because no one in my family is completely sane I found far more 'fun' photos from various holidays and adventures my family have been on:

 On this particular fishing trip guess who caught the biggest fish. One massive barracuda 

Nancy swinging through the trees in Thailand. 

And if I were there no doubt some sort of Daschund related birthday card would appear:

So Nancy although I cannot be there in person I do wish you a fantastic birthday with Graham and the Smeage:

Hope you have an amazing time at the noodle house and everything tastes amazing (I am jealous) 

And if I were there I would make some sort of birthday cake :)

Either way I hope you have a fantastic time and do not end up like this from too much cake and noodles:

But in all seriousness I hope you have a fantastic day, minimum idiots show up at your work, Graham and Seb make a huge fuss of you and that you have a great night! See you later on Skype. 

Love Olly  

P.s finding all of the birthday images made me think, why do I not have this????

Gingerbread Recipe

Gingerbread Recipe 

Right so as promised in my previous post here is my gingerbread recipe that I use for all of my house construction and cookies.  Christmas time or not as it happens. 


So here is my recipe that I created by combining a few from the BBC and Delia Smith. I sometimes use molasses instead of Golden Syrup for certain batches if I know its for people who prefer it a little darker with a richer taste. Personally though, I am a golden syrup all the way, sort of girl.


Ingredients:

• 350g plain flour (plus lots more for kneading and covering surfaces)
• 5 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
• 175g light brown soft sugar
• 100g butter
• 4 tablespoons golden syrup
• 1 medium egg
• 1 cup of water, perhaps more if it is misbehaving. 

So the first thing most recipes tell you to do is pre-heat your oven, but I actually would advice against this if you are doing a house or anything complicated, you don't want to rush this. If you are making cookies then go ahead and set your oven to 180 C, if you are going to do it later I advice doing it after you have made your dough and before you start to play with it. 

Right add in all of your dry ingredients, starting with the big one, the flour. 

 Ignore the fact that the scales say 700, I made a double batch for those two big houses. 

And your bicarbonate of soda 

Next off add in your spices. I'm using ginger and Cinnamon. 

Nice big ol' spoon of the stuff! 

Next part add in your sugar, I use light brown because I think it tastes that bit better (and more Christmas-y) but if you don't have it you can use dark or plain sugar. It wont self destruct, not the end of the world :)

Mix it all together so you end up with a crumbly dry mix, like the picture above. Then its time to measure out your butter. Butter improves almost everything with the exception of your heart and cholesterol. 

Butter <3 

Once again remember this is me making a double batch so you may not want quite as much butter in the picture :)

I know lots of recipes advice against this but in this case I cheat and melt my butter when I add it in, it helps with the kneading and heck the smell is so good when you add it in


After your butter in goes your egg. Funny thing, the 6 eggs in the box  I used that week were all double yolks. They were just a normal pack of eggs but every one I used turned out like this. Maybe I should have tried my luck at the lottery that week.......

Then add in about a cup of water, keep some on hand when kneading if it needs more.
Now for all the syrupy goodness. Golden syrup going in time. There is always the trick of heating your spoon when you measure it out as it makes it less viscous and more runny which helps a bit. If you are going to do that then keep a mug of boiled water next to you to leave the spoon in to warm it, thats the easiest way I have found. Or you could be bad and just stick the syrupy spoon in your mouth. Just saying he he. 

Two- two yolk eggs there. You only need one for a single batch. 


Then the kneading! After a wash get your hands in there and smush everything together, and mix it until you get a nice ball of mix that can hold its own shape. 

Like this. 

After that it is all up to you. If you are going to make a house make sure you use a template even it is just one you drew earlier, I have tried to draw them by eye before, bad idea with a capital B. 

Once they are in the oven check after 10 minutes if you are baking large panels  maybe 5 to 8 minutes if you are baking something smaller. 

Good luck and happy baking 

and as always thanks for reading x

Christmas in August

Christmas in August 

I cannot recommend having holidays at non-holiday times enough! No seriously there is something ever so fun about suddenly deciding to have a Christmas dinner in late August. 

This was not in fact my family being odd for once, this all started because of some family friends who discovered an extra Christmas pudding in the cupboard that was close to expiring. Said Christmas pudding was due to an over ordering in my family on Tesco online, I think we wanted two puddings, someone clicked too much and we ended up with four. Then my grandmother announced she had bought us a 'luxury' Christmas pudding so too many puddings were had! 

This then in turn lead to gifting puddings left and right, one of which went to these particular family friends. So in some small way we are responsible for Christmas in August and what fun it was!!

So when we were invited to this unusual dinner I of course decided it was time to whip out the gingerbread! 

 Gingerbread houses being modelled by the lovely Nancy :)

Here they are just iced in pairs and drying so they can be assembled 

Mostly assembled, as you can see I use a variety of cans and bottles to prop up the sides while the icing dries.  Mushy peas are rather effective. 

 The almost finished gingerbread houses. There were originally more trees and a moose gingerbread cookie to add to the scenery but they met with an untimely disaster of the Nom variety. 


Hope you had a giggle at this, recipe to follow shortly :) 

as always thanks for reading xx

Book Art Supply Cubby

Book Art Supply Cubby 

Well I kept seeing lots of other bloggers who are far more creative than myself making books with hidey holes. The Glue Gun Girl did a rather good one. You can find it Here. :)

So I decided to have a crack at it myself. 

I started with an old book I had picked up in the hope of it being useful for a paper I was writing. It was unfortunately not of much use for reference material however it was a nice big book in pretty good condition.  So I decided that I wanted to make use of it :)


After I had hollowed out the book, by ruling out on the size of the space I wanted, and took a scalpel to it, and the good thing was that after cutting one page it left an outline on the next, and the page outline was a marker for where to cut the next to keep it the same size.  Then When I had reached the back page I applied plenty of PVA glue to make sure pages stayed where they were, and then I started to paint the inside of the front page. 

I tried keeping it with a blotch background. 

After the background was done I started adding some details. I was thinking about a fairy scene despite my ability to paint figures. So the first thing that was added was a toadstool. 

A Little more detail creeps in

The thing I really like about putting a lot of paint is that when it is dry, you can close your eyes you can still feel the rough shape, especially the red cone type flower. 



After this I wish I had not added this next bit but hey retrospect is a lovely thing isn't it? :)

I have just started to add the leaves but I confess I really do not like them. I also have no photos of them at the moment. I will actually have a look at it when I am back in the uk to see how easily it can be covered up.  At the moment I am trying to keep all my acrylic paints in there, as well as my stamps however it cannot hold both so I do need to sort it out. 



Anyway Just fancied sharing it with you tonight, Hope you are all having a nice day and once again, thanks for reading :) xx