Ashely-inspired Bunting

One of my favourite blogs is Under the Sycamore where Ashley shares her beautiful photographs, craft projects, and stories of life with her cute children. Recently she shared a DIY tutorial of a bunting made with fabric strips and playing cards. I was inspired to make an Ashley-style bunting made with fabric strips. It was fun and easy to make!

I loved looking through all our fabric scraps for my pink and purple theme. I alternated one pink one purple, with 6 fabrics repeated in order. 

I started in the afternoon yesterday and finished this morning. My bunting is quite short, probably around 2 1/2 ft. I looped the doubled strips under the main strip and pushed the end through and pulled it tight.

Taking photos was hard because it's long and thin! I had to change where I thought it would hang to the landing above the stairs. The white background looked better than before but a lot of cropping was involved!

I made my collage on PicMonkey which is a fun photo editing site with a variety of styles to choose from in free collage. This last picture was made on the Editor using the second effect on the list, the name of which I have forgotten!

Bible Posters 1 - Philippians 4:8

One of the things I love to design are posters of bible verses. I have been working on creating digital copies of some of these lately. As the first series on my blog, I am going to show these, one at a time, on Sundays on the blog. I hope you like them. At the moment I want all my posters to stay here on my blog, so I have labeled them with my blog address. 

'Think on These Things'

I heard a great sermon on Philippians 4:8: 'Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.'

What goes into our minds is important. As Christians we must not be soaking up worldly things but godly things. We are to be actively setting our minds on good things, like Jesus, God, and the Bible, and meditating on them. 

The poster is inspired by the sweetness of studying God's word and delighting ourselves in Him. This is an unusual poster style for me, most of them focusing on the words only. I made it on photoshop from a drawing that I scanned. 

Easy Iced Sugar Cookies

These biscuits are crisp, golden and very good. There moreishness comes for the slightly salty and rather buttery flavour and decorating them is fun.

This recipe is a great one to bake with little kids! Make the dough beforehand and chill, and then they can roll out the dough and cut out the shapes. While they cook and cool, make the yummy and easy icing, then decorate using squeeze icing bottles or a spoon. They are something really tasty too and can be enjoyed by everyone if you monitor how much they handle the dough! 

375g plain flour
large pinch salt
150g caster sugar
200g unsalted butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanila extract

Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl or the food processor. Add the sugar and butter and rub or process to form breadcrumbs.Add in the egg vanilla and stir together or process again until it forms a smooth dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 20 minutes+ in the refrigerator.

Lightly grease 3 baking trays. Cut the dough into 3 chunks and roll out one at a time on a pastry board, until about 4mm thick. Stamp out the cookie cutter shapes. Transfer to the baking trays.

Place the baking tray in a preheated oven, 160ºC, 325ºF, gas mark 3 for 15 minutes, or until just golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a cooling rack.

120 icing sugar
15g cold water

1 desert spoon cocoa powder

few drops red food colouring

To make the icing, put icing sugar into a small bowl and add either the cocoa powder (for chocolate icing) or food colouring (for pale pink icing) and stir until combined. Then add the water and mix to a fairly stiff icing. You want the mixture stiff enough to hold it's shape when piped, but soft enough to pipe. Add more icing sugar if you have used too much water. You can make 1 batch brown and one batch pink icing for more options! Spoon into a plastic squeeze bottle and decorate the cookies with different lines and patterns. Allow to set before eating. 

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Gouge

One of the things I thought would be nice to do on my blog is book reviews. There are many books I've read, many I've enjoyed, and some that I have loved, devoured, and then read again. One of these is the fantasy adventure novel 'The Little White Horse.' I have read it twice so far and really enjoyed the story. The adventure is fast-paced and new clues and events keep you reading until the end where all is revealed and set right.

The main character, Maria Merryweather, grows on you as the story goes on. At first she is introduced as a little vain, but soon her courage and determination come through, when she and her nurse leave London to live on the estate of Sir Benjamin, Maria's cousin. She discovers her heritage and the story of her ancestors the Merryweather's. 

The villains of the story, the Men from the Dark Woods lead by the evil Coq de Noir, are also put back in their rightful places by Maria and her faithful companions: Wrolf, who is thought to be a big black dog, Serena the hare, Zacharia the cat and Robin, a boy she used to know. 

I would recommend this book for age 9-14 as an exiting read, though it is fairly long. You can buy it on  amazon here.

Garden Photo Shoot

My mum brought home two lovely ornaments from a Flower Show: a hare sculpture and ornamental bird cage. When I saw them on the garden table with some crisp, drying roses, a white candle and red lantern I knew a quick photo shoot was set up in front of me. A bit of re-arranging and another move at the end (before the camera battery died!) and I had some pretty nice pictures. I thought I'd share the inspiration! 

Puffy American Pancakes with Strawberries and Maple Syrup

One of my favourite weekend breakfasts is pancakes. I prefer these small, thick ones to traditional thin crepe-type pancakes. These are traditional to serve in a stack with maple syrup and some butter, and the addition of strawberries adds another flavour and texture dimension. 

I made these one at a time in a small pan but my mum was able to do several at a time in a large one. Another favourite topping was chocolate spread and strawberries! Apologies for the lack of photos, I did take some more but they were mysteriously deleted! 

Puffy American Pancakes

You will need:

225g plain flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

30g butter, melted
300ml milk

butter for frying (note: unless you like the salty/sweet combination, use unsalted butter for frying)

• Blend all the ingredients in a blender or in a bowl.

• You can leave the mix
(covered) for a around 20 minutes if you have the time. 

• Melt a small piece of butter in your pan, and pour or ladle some of the mix into it. Make these  smaller than normal pancakes because they are thicker.

• When the underside is cooked (you can check by lifting with a spatula) flip the pancake over and cook the other side. 

• Stack the cooked pancakes on each plate and pour over maple syrup and sprinkle on strawberries. This recipe makes about 11 pancakes. 

Fashion Postcards

I was given 'My Wonderful World of Fashion Postcard Book' a while ago and am using the cool fill-in-the-design and colour-in postcards for thank-you notes.

The postcards themselves are made of thick card and are all held together in a pad and are easy to remove. The front features a black-and-white drawing for you to complete or add to and colour in. The back has pretty pink lines for the address and a cute stamp design, although you might want to send them in an envelope.

Some of the designs are funky and fun and others are glamorous and sophisticated. It is interesting to look through and find a design that your recipient will like.

These postcards are a great way to add personality and style to your message!

Girly Gift Pouch

This year I have decided to sew most of my gifts for other people. My younger sister is going to be 11 and I wanted something to suit her. It tried to make shorts but it was way harder than I had anticipated so I settled for something easier. First I thought pencil case and then I was told about this lovely tutorial on the blog Flossie Teacakes. I made this pouch for my sister to use as a small pencil case or a make up bag. I put some hair clips and bands and some sweets into it before I wrapped it up. 

Maybe you know someone who would like this as a gift?

Fresh Flowers

For my birthday I got a beautiful bunch of flowers which I decided to arrange myself. I used a white ceramic jug, which I thought would go well with the purple, white and green theme.
After a few attempts I found an arrangement I liked and took some pictures. 

There was one lone bright yellow flower which I put separately.

Fresh flowers are a lovely way to brighten up your room and your day!

Welcome!

Hi, I'm Izzy and welcome to my blog. I am 14 years old and homeschool and I enjoy many hobbies, some of which I'll write about here.
The idea for this blog is that I write on 14 subjects, which are:
Art
Bible
Books
Craft
Card-Making
Fashion Design
Food
Gifts
Home
Inspiration
Life
Photos
Sewing
Writing

I would love you to leave a comments on my posts!  I hope that you enjoy reading and are inspired.