grazing..

I'm a sucker for two things:

1. free things
2. food

So when I saw that Graze were offering customers their first order of their snack boxes for free, I had to try it out.

You can find out more about Graze here - www.graze.com.
They make little boxes filled with healthy and not so healthy goodness - dried and fresh fruit, nuts, seeds, chocolate, crackers etc - designed for office workers trying to eat something a bit healthier during the day.

This is something I am trying to do more, rather than reaching for the biscuit tin. Having said that, this box didn't actually make it to the office, it stayed at home where it was promptly eaten up!

My first box didn't contain any fresh fruit due to a problem in their packing, but I did receive a nice selection of japanese rice crackers, 'fire nuts' (not a male affliction by the way), dried raspberries and chocolate buttons!

Unfortunately the chocolate buttons were not of the best quality chocolate and had that supermarket own brand of chocolate taste to them, so they were promptly baked into cookies where they became much better :)

The fire nuts were my favourite, mainly because they contined Wasabi Peanuts, which is something I wanted to try for a while.

Graze seem to love their voucher codes so its pretty hard to pay full price for a box, they were even kind enough to give me a code to pass on to others, so you can use this code for a free box:

9ZD1RYBE
www.graze.com

xx

one of a kind..

{a nice person on flickr says I have 'boken' or 'bokeh' on this picture,
I didn't realise it myself but I think I have?}

I've been hunting extra carefully and I am so pleased to bring you this set of rare 1940s beads in the form of earrings and a necklace.

They are my favourite kind of beads, they have a rippled watery kind of texture and are nice high quality glass. I've had them in a deep amber before and now I've found them in this rich purple.
I've matched them with gold fill and dark oxidized silver.

I hope you like :)

I hope to find more beads in this style but different colours, who knows? I may or may not! Fingers crossed.

Cherry picking, pitting and er.. pieing?

Well I did have a rather lovely start to the weekend. Where I work there are several small farmers, nurseries and vegetable growers so every now and again something fabulously seasonal, local and yummy comes up food wise.

There is a chap who sells Asparagus in early May, the nursery next door has a fabulous selection of weird and wonderful squashes in the autumn and there is talk of raspberries in the summer from someone else.

This month it is cherries. I think amongst all the talk of Wimbledon and strawberries, cherries do get rather lost. They are just as great when in season and fresh, local cherries aren't a patch on the rubbery supermarket types.

Driving into work last Thursday I saw a great big sign for 'CHERRIES - 2MILES' - hurrahing slightly to myself, I came prepared on Friday with change and flat shoes, with my sights set on cherry pie.

I picked a generous 1/2 kilo of during my cherries (£2! bargain!) during my lunch hour and returned to work just in time for a cuppa and a biscuit before the desk job continued - the kind of lunchbreak I like..

{stems on one side and pips arranged neatly on the other - weird?}

I found this recipe for Sweet Cherry Pie on my favourite food blog, Smitten Kitchen. I had a few pastry problems when preparing it, but we'll gloss over that and I'll show you this instead...


I'm going to go back at the end of the week with plans for a kind of black forest gateau. We also had cherries and pancakes on Saturday morning, which were fabulous, but I forgot to take a picture unfortunately for I am still a novice food blogger ;)

xx

foodie goodies + new earrings

I'm afraid I've been neglecting this blog recently, I'm afraid the lure of Twitter is too much, it is far easier for me to keep up a twitter account rather than a blog account. But I will try harder to write here!

For now, the good weather is providing me with lots of opportunities to take photos, so I am snapping everything in sight. I think the summer may turn this blog into a photo blog. Hope you enjoy these pictures from my week.

From top left to bottom right - Theatre Earrings (one of a kind), Cherry Tomato Pizza, Vanilla Caramel Earrings & Home grown spuds.

Start of summer..

I planned to blog about what a wonderful summery weekend we had and how gorgeous it was today too - but now I am in the midst of a fantastic thunderstorm! Just a quick collection of pictures from the weekend (before we have another power cut). We harvested our first crop of potatoes as well as a few strawberries. Everything else is coming along beautifully too, and I've been feeling flowery on the jewellery front too!

new jewellery + housekeeping

A bit of both from my blog post today... I've been busy over the weekend and I have 2 and a bit new pieces for the shop. I say two and a bit because one is a redesigned of one my bracelets. The Tahiti bracelet was originally an assymetric design but I found that the shape didn't really work very well when worn. I have swapped it around so the lovely blue filigree bead is in the centre, surrounded by the magenta lucite on either side. I also found the oval link chain I have works much better with the oval beads too. I hope you like it!

I have also added two new pairs of earrings to my Etsy shop, some sultry amber earrings made with vintage lucite and some bright and bold red and mustard earrings also made with vintage lucite.  Both on gorgeous pure brass findings.

Now housekeeping... ;) I'll be away from home for a few days this week, between the 9th - 12th June, for my day job. I will have the pleasure of spending time in a probably muddy field talking to farmers about very dull topics. Any orders made during this time will be shipped on the 13th June. I'll be holding a very special sale of my Tropics Collection from the 13th, so check my Etsy shop for details. Hope you have a good week! x

My new favourite shop

I've been looking and looking and looking again at this gorgeous shop of felted flowers - A Alicia Accessories. I love the little pins and corsages, and the garlands are so unique.

I hope I can save up enough pennies to buy something from this shop to go
with my wedding dress

xx