Grapefruit and Sugar: Christmas Range

You may have read my recent post on stopping putting your aspirations on hold and seen that a big aspiration for me is designing more. 

With this is mind several weeks ago I set about designing my first real range for my little company 'Grapefruit and Sugar'. I've previously attending craft fairs and tried selling on Etsy, but with products I'd designed at uni, meaning none really sat together has a range. So I thought it was about time I injected some brand spanking new designs into 'Grapefruit and Sugar' and thus my Christmas range was born. 

I realise it's quite late to be showing you these designs now with Christmas only a week away, but there will be new ranges to follow in the next few weeks. I uploaded my designs onto Etsy in the beginning of December, and have had such a lovely response. I'd never sold an item on Etsy before, so it was such a wonderful and shocking feeling when my first sale went through. 

These are a selection of my Christmas designs and you can see the full range here.

I just wanna Bake - Homemade Honeycomb

Since buying a sugar thermometer I've become somewhat obsessed with the idea of making my own sweets, so I thought why not turn my 'I just Wanna Bake' post on Homemade Marshmallows  into a regular feature. I'm going to be creating different sweets each week and sharing my results; the good, the bad and the straight into the bin! 

This weeks sweet of choice is Honeycomb, or as I've had to describe to some of my friends, the none chocolate part of a crunchie!! After looking up multiple recipes online I settled on one from Nigella, slightly adjusting her quantities to suit my more greedy needs! 

Ingredients:

200g Caster sugar

7 Heaped tablespoons of Golden syrup

3 Teaspoons Bicarbonate of Soda

The essential item for this, and the majority of the sweets I will be making is a sugar thermometer, and as I recently discovered a heavy based pan. The pan really does make a massive difference, I tried using a normal saucepan while making toffee and it just caused the sugar to burn rapidly, swap to a lovely hard based pan and my results improved dramatically.

Into my wonderful hard based pan I added both the Caster sugar and Golden syrup, mixing the two together slightly with a wooden spoon (although you'll want to be sure not to stir the mixture once the hob is turned on). Turn on the hob and cook on a medium heat, ensuring that your sugar thermometer is attached to the side of the pan so you can clearly see the temperature. You can how my mixture started out below- golden in colour.

You want the mixture to reach 149C on your sugar thermometer, otherwise known has the hard crack stage - this may take some time but be patient and don't wander off from your pan of you could miss the crucial temperature.You'll see the mixture bubble away from a beautiful golden colour into a much darker maple shade - you can see mine below.

Once you reach 149C take the pan off the heat and add the 3 teaspoons of bicarb powder, whisk this into the mixture, as you do so you'll see the mixture erupt into a gorgeous mass of liquid gold. You'll then want to act quickly, pouring the mixture into baking tray or dish lined with parchment paper. 

Leave the Honeycomb to set, when it has completely cooled you can remove the parchment paper and smash it into chunks. If your feeling extra jazzy you could then dip the honeycomb chunks into melted chocolate - creating your very own crunches! 

The length of time the honeycomb can be kept for depends upon the humidity, if your in a hot climate it won't keep as well and will tend to soften faster. Having baked mine in December I'm hopeful I can store it for several weeks, if kept in an airtight container, I've also wrapped my batch up in parchment paper to increase its freshness. 

I'd love to hear any tips of suggestions, have you tried making this recipe yourself? How did yours turn out?

Stop Putting your Aspirations on Hold

I was recently scrolling through my pinterest in search of some lovely lettering, now of corse lovely lettering mostly accompanies lovely quotes - I scrolled past most of these firmly fixed on my hunt for a christmassy type face, but then one really stood out to me:

"The trouble is, you think you have time"

I'm always saying to myself I'll do that tomorrow, next week, next year, always thinking I have all the time in the world to do everything I've ever wanted. When really whats wrong with today, why not do it now and start slowly making my aspirations more of my reality. 

One prime example of this is wanting to learn Spanish - Five years ago I visited Bilbao, in Spain, while there my friend who I was with became sick and needed to go to hospital. Now this became a very stressful experience, mainly due to the language barrier (and my friend needing hospital attention of corse). We couldn't speak Spanish and most of the staff in the hospital couldn't speak English, at least not fluently enough for us to understand what was going on. This experience made me realise how much we rely upon other nationalities being able to speak English, perhaps arrogantly so, and that really I should set about learning more languages myself.

Through out the rest of our trip I kept saying how much I wanted to learn Spanish and that I'd certainly get lessons when I was back in England. Now of corse back in England I didn't get lessons, I started University a few weeks later and other focuses took over. Yet throughout the past five years I'd throw into various conversations how I'd love to learn spanish, still not act upon it, my friend who I'd holidayed with would jokingly ask me how the spanish was going!!

In September I saw Spanish classes were available in my local college, and I thought it's now or never, so I enrolled upon a beginners Spanish class and have just completed my first 12 weeks. When I asked my tutor how long it would take someone to learn Spanish fluently, his reply was roughly four years. If I'd just taken those Spanish classes five years ago when I said I would, I'd be fluent by now. It's fair to say I'm not a natural when it comes to Spanish but I'm going to continue on the course, cause I don't want to delay making my bilingual dream a reality by another five years.

This quote really made me think about all of the things I put off doing, mainly because I'm scared. Now that I'm slowing ticking Spanish off my list I also intend to focus more upon my other big aspiration and that's designing. This one is a biggie, and one which will take a lot of time to progress, but like all things the sooner you start the sooner you'll get there. Post to follow on my first real dip into the world of card designs! 

Stop putting off till tomorrow what you can start today, cause the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time!

I just wanna bake - Homemade Marshmallows

I've once again been neglecting my little blog, I must stop doing this.

Recently I've found myself getting a lot more into baking, specifically the idea of making my own sweets. A few weeks ago it was my Mums birthday, and a jar of homemade marshmallows seemed like the perfect gift idea. 

After being overwhelmed by possible recipe ideas online, I picked an egg free one has I hoped this would be easier for a first attempt - you can find the recipe I used here. 

At first I was nervous that there might be a tricky process involved, but it was a lot simpler than I had imaged and I'd certainly recommend giving the recipe ago. From researching how best to make them the one overwhelming essential item for marshmallow, and sweet making in general is a sugar thermometer - this measures the temperature of the sugar when boiling. Without it, its much more guess related, and you have to rely on seeing if the sugar creates balls when dropped in water, the thermometer took out this guess work and made everything much more accurate. 

You can pretty much make the mallows to any flavour you wish - I made Vanilla, Rose and Chocolate flavours (I also added in some food colouring to turn the Rose mallows pink).

Kew Gardens

Several weeks ago I was asked to design some floral inspired prints, so I saw this has the perfect excuse to take a trip to Kew Gardens in search of some botanical inspiration! 

Below are a few of my favourites, I was on a bright colour hunt, but sadly I think I was a bit too late in the summer for a lot of the flowers. I also wandered around Kew's botanical gallery, I hadn't done this before and I'm really glad I did, filled floor to ceiling with beautifully detailed paintings, photography is not aloud the gallery and I don't think a photo would quite to it justice, but its certainly worth a visit if your a fan of florals. 

Updating my Etsy

I'm a massive fan of things to do lists, I'm so scatty and forgetful I find it a lot easier to write down all the things I'll likely forget to do. One of these such things, which has been floating about on my to-do list for some time now, is to update my Etsy shop - which I've finally achieved this week, a few tweaks remain, but for me this counts as it being pretty much crossed off the list. I love the feeling of completing something, and hopefully my list will slowly begin shrinking. 

I find Etsy so tricky, I never know how best to photo my products, and when I've done it I always question if I'm happy with it. One of my biggest dilemmas was the cover banner, I just did not know what I wanted -  only that there had to be pineapples in there somewhere! I'm sure no doubt I'll change it again in a few weeks, but for now I'm happy to finally have my stuff back on Etsy, after some serious neglect. 

You can check out Etsy shop here 

Elton John: Western Homes Community Stadium, Colchester

Elton Johns 'Crocodile Rock' used to blast out from our house at full volume, every morning before school, my mums go to tool to drag us out of bed and up jumping around the living room to 'When Suzie wore her dresses tight'. So its no surprise that Elton had long been on my list of top musicians to see live, I even debated buying a ticket to Bestival last year purely because he was the headlining act. 

When I heard that Elton John would be playing in my home town of Colchester I HAD to go, it seemed strange travelling home to Suffolk from London to see a Legend, a reverse to the usual! Western Holmes community stadium did not disappoint, and nor did Elton John, I hope this is the start of Colchester appearing on the touring locations of many other musicians, and its made my love for Elton ever stronger!

Southbank: Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden

The Thames is one of my favourite things about London, I love it in the day, the night, even in the rain, so obviously South Bank ranks pretty highly among my favourite London places. I hadn't been in a while, so it seemed like the perfect location to enjoy a saturday night, I love how every summer so many cute locations pop up along the river. 

We had been craving a roof top bar, the perfect way to spend a summers evening, and South Bank did not disappoint, watching the sun go down looking over the thames from The Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden. The roof is open till September from 10am-10pm, complete with grass, flowers and wooden mushrooms the perfect relaxing location, one which I'd certainly recommend visiting at some point this summer. The Mango Mojito was my drink of choice for the rooftop, and that alone is enough to bring me back time and time again, a definate must have. 

Polo in the Park and the Kia Oval

The world cup seems to well and truly be upon us now, with England's first game having taken place last saturday, and with it, my interest in sports remains at pretty non-existant. That being said I surprised myself recently by attending not one, but two sporting events last week: Essex V. Surrey 20/20 at the Kia Oval and Polo in the Park. 

The Oval is just a few stops down the northern line for me, so off I went with my Dad to watch the cricket, and it was totally not what I had in mind, I was expecting a quiet evening with the occasional bit of panic as a ball heads toward the crowd. What I got was a wonderfully buzzing atmosphere, everyone surrounding me seemed in great spirits. Gleefully welcoming in the weekend with a pimm's and a spot of cricket, a great way to spend a summers evening - either has a pre night out warm up or the main event. Definantly worth going to if your at a loss for something different to do on a friday night, especially now the summer seems to have arrived.

My next sporting event of the weekend was Chestertons Polo in the Park, at Hurlingham park, Putney. With it came the tough of decision of what to wear, one must make an effort for polo! The park had been transformed into somewhat of a posh festival with the Polo taking place in the centre, the usual greasy burger and chips of a festival were replaced with wonderful food vendors selling pealla, mac 'n' cheese as well as bread flavour ice-cream! I opted for a delicious lamp wrap from French and Grace and would certainly recommend a visit to their premises in Brixton. 

The two areas which most caught my attention were the giant Makhiki tent and a double decker Pimms bus, perfect! Having never watched Polo before I have to admit I didn't really know what was going on, but it was certainly an interesting sport to watch.

Who knows maybe I'll be transformed this Summer and become a major sporting fan, with Wimbledon around the corner you never know!

Sunshine, Daisy, Buttercup

This week I popped back home to suffolk for a few days and was met by an abundance of beautiful flowers that had sprung up since I was last there. The perfect inspiration for drawing; summer flowers and sunshine, I'm a sucker for both. 

Wimbledon Art Studios: Millie McCallum

If I had to a pick a favourite studio it would have to be Millie McCallum's, her linoprint's are decorated with quirky extras, turning what is already a pretty gorgeous print into something beautifully magical. Of corse yet again the bright colours caught my eye, and the fact that she, like me seems to have a love of both pineapples and pandas!!

Wimbledon Art Studios: Arabella Stewart

I just cant help but love Arabella's sketches, they are so cute and yet so simple: black line on a white background. So lovely.