REVIEW: Craft Fail, When Homemade Goes Horribly Wrong

We've all had those tries, those attempts at recreating something we've seen on Pinterest regardless of your craft or baking skills. The attempts of times I've tried to make something I've pinned and turned into a failure has been often I will confess. Like this twig wreath I attempted when autumn arrived which ended up being far more cardboard then twigs, or the Christmas bauble wreath that had more baubles on the floor within a week of it hanging. Plus let's not talk about all the times I forget to measure in the baking powder or soda into a loaf or cake. Trust me, there have been many fails on my part.

And yet I still love to try. I guess that's all part of the fun. 

Now there's a book that is great for the crafters in your life if you're needing some inspiration for Christmas gifts already. The Craft Fail book comes out of the craftfail.com by "failure enthusiast" Heather Mann filled with real life tales and confessions of all those Pinterest projects be it home decor, fashion to food fails, anything and everything that never turned out quite right. With over 200 colour photographs and oh so many craft fails, you can't help finding yourself gigging along.

You don't need to be a crafter or baker to appreciate the fails, nor to laugh along. And you really will laugh. But that is part of the fun. Craft Fail reminds us that those failures, those mess ups are part of the fun of crafting, or baking or DIY. Mess ups help us recognize and appreciate the times they do go right but that even when they don't we're still learning something.

Our crafts may never turn out Pinterest perfect - but you know what, we can darn well try.

I'd love to hear what some of your craft fails have been! 

Craft Fail - When Homemade Goes Horribly Wrong by Heather Mann

Workman Publishing // November 2014 // ISBN: 9780761179924 // RRP $12.95 (US)
 A copy of Craft Fail was sent to me for review purposes, all opinions expressed are my own.

LIFE: Girl Meets Pumpkin

Ten year old me to dress up as a witch or a bat for Halloween. Me and the girl that lived next door but one use to go trick or treating every year for a while, since then I don't particularly do anything to celebrate. Neither have I ever carved a pumpkin. Until Sunday when my afternoon was spent on the kitchen floor doing just that.

Seeing we finally have a house, and the all important front porch we finally have somewhere to stick a pumpkin and decorate. We picked up one of those super cheap (like $3.99 super cheap) carving kits you see in the stores everywhere from September on wards.. They come with these "tools" and a set of templates to get you carving away. Being the first time doing such a craft thing, and feeling a bit adventures I opted for the 2 pumpkin difficultly of the spooky ghost.

It actually was a tonne of fun, even the snooping out all the gooey matter part. Even though by the time i'd finished, it felt like I was covered in the stuff. Apparently I don't fancy the smell or how slimy the inside of a pumpkin is, either.



Mr ghostly pumpkin sat on our dinning table until it was dark enough to get him outside. The official lighting the tea light inside the pumpkin ceremony was on Sunday night and it's been sitting on our porch ever since. Our street gets pretty dark at night, so he shines rather well. We live down a street people don't seem to do much decorating for this holiday, there's no front gardens turned into graveyards and asylums or huge blow up ghosts and pumpkins at any right.



So here he is, trying to look all scary. *insert scary ghost noises here*.

And yeah, i'm kinda pleased with myself about it all even if this is about how festive I get for Halloween.

Have you been carving any pumpkins?

TRAVEL: Oswiecim, a Town in Poland

One of the best ice creams I've ever licked and slurped and crushed was in a small quiet, little Polish town. On a warm April day a long time ago in 2007, we'd been walking around this town, taking notes, photographing as part of our university project about social and economical change in Poland since the fall of communism. The ice cream was something to do while killing time, walking around the cobbled streets, seeing the colorful buildings, the quirky little cars you only find in that part of Europe. 

A castle sits on the edge of the town, just off the main street, it watches over the place and glimmers in the sunlight. It's fortunes raising and falling, it's population changing as the fortunes of Germany and Poland changed hands over the centuries. 

The little town is named Oswiecim, located about 30 or so miles west of Krakow. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come near, drive pass but may never stop in the town ever single year. Why? Because they are on their way to the place that since World War 2, came to define the town more than anything, the place who's German name many also know the town by - Auschwitz. 

Since 1945 the town, at least under it's German name, has been known the world round. The dark twisted horrors of the death camp that still lands outside the town, has become entangled with life in this small, Polish town. We visited the town, spoke to Jewish leaders, learn of the Jewish history before the German invasion. We walked around the streets, saw the homes the German commanders made home, we drove past the IG Farben factory before taking the drive out to Auschwitz.

Oswiecim had and still does have a life before and after the death camp, yet many don't separate them, the town was small, unremarkable enough, just a normal Polish town like any other. Even after WW2 the town continued, people lived there, made it their home. Yet those six years of WW2 define it more than any other. We don't hear of the Oswiecim of now, just the Oswiecim of then.

If you're ever in the area, whether your enjoying the sites of Krakow or you're paying your respects at Auschwitz. Take a trip to that little Polish town, enjoy an ice cream and walk along it's streets.

LIFE: Call This a Hello

Sometimes you need to step back and get back down to the basics. We can all get a little too caught up with sharing the must have thing, that product you just gotta run out to the store and find or just sharing that huge hot chocolate we had the night before. Sometimes we just have to stop and say hello.

The past couple of months my followers have increased (yey) without me really trying (double yey). But when you stumble across a blog, a couple of years in, they have a substantial back catalog of posts, it's a little hard to really grasp what they are all about. Even with the help of an about me page. So I thought, hey why not just have a break, say hello and talk about myself for a little, and even perhaps get you to do the same down in the comments (see I like comments - there you're finding something out about me). 

So what might you know about me already? You might have worked out I live in Michigan, right outside of Detroit, you might have worked out I wasn't born in the US - in fact I'm a Brit, from a super small rural (narrow minded ahem) town in East Yorkshire. I'm 28, a little scared of turning 30, Michigan has been home for nearly three years (come November) and I share my home with my guy and my two kitties - Ed, who is fat, purs like a motor and speaks with a Russian voice - don't ask, and Smoky who is super timid and playful, aka tiny face, smokes, teeny tiny ickle bickle.

Anyway so once upon a time I met an American guy (online - controversial I know) and we got talking, fell in love and five years later we're still together. We managed the whole long distance relationship malarkey for just over two years. I filled out lots of paper work, paid lots of pennies, had interviews and moved to the US in 2011. Joe is my comic book geek, he's hell bent on corrupting me into liking comic books, Transformer toys, Star Trek and model trains. And he's succeeded. It's a good job I love him.

In a previous life I lived in Newcastle in my university years - four wild years of partying, drinking too much and studying even more in both geography (BA) and sociology (MA). My one university regret is not exploring more of the region which in turn sparks my passion for visiting and documenting the places on my doorstep (and showing them all off here). I'm a firm believer of a couple of things - you don't need to travel far and wide to see amazing things, live life with your eyes open and always look up, but you probably want to look down too, just so you don't trip up.

Saying that I have a lot of issues walking into things - sign posts, a couple of pillars in Target. You get the picture.

Aside from blogging you'll find me picking around estate sales, getting far too attached to vintage postcards, taking far to many photographs, taco bell is my weakness, I have stress issues, often found trying to craft something, pretending that I know something about gardening, cross stitching, being sarky about something. I enjoy whiskey and playing my music on old vinyl records, lots of vinyl records.  I treat chocolate digestives like gold dust and I always enjoy runny eggs. You get the picture. 

I'm a bit of an expat blogger - even though the term expat bugs me a little, a Michigan blogger, a Detroitish blogger, a Yorkshire blogger, a lifestyle blogger. I'll throw out a recipe, a kitty picture, some rant or another. But most of all this place, this blog reflects me. It's a mixture of all these things, it's a mix of everything any anything that makes up me and my life. I'm not trying to be a big blogger, or have everyone love me, I'm just trying to be myself and find the words to make them all come through the screen.

Most of all I'm glad you're all here for the ride, whether you've been here from the start or you started reading three days ago. I just want to say thank you, thank you for all the comments and shares and everything else. 

If you like what you see you can always find me in a couple of other places;

bloglovin // instagram // pinterest // twitter 

So that is enough about me, come say hello, and if you have any questions you'd love me to answer about myself or my blog, feel free to drop them into the comments! :)

LIFE: Mushrooms and Autumnal Rain

Heavy rain seems to herald the mushrooms poking up through our grass around the old maple tree. They seem to sprout up within hours although not so many to form fairy rings. Which is probably a good thing, old British folklore would have you believe any human stepping inside a fairy ring would succumb to a hundred year sleep, or worse yet be taken away to fairy land to never return. Luckily i'm still standing.

While I can't lay claim to any knowledge about they types I do find them incredible to look at. Their peeling layers, the shades and colours, their shapes. Something I hope these photographs I managed to capture on a very damp and dark morning managed to achieve. Somewhat. I guess many may see them as a pest, an unattractive grass feature. Yet I look upon them as a sign that least the garden has lots of organic matter going on in the soil which is more then fine with me.

Food: Vintage Apple Pie Recipe

It's more than possible that I blog about apple pies every autumn, but seriously they are one of my favorite things about the season especially when you pick them yourself like we did on our last trip to the orchard. But I also grew up with apple trees in the back garden so half the fun was being a tomboy and climbing them but also getting to help pick them every autumn, wrapping them up for over the winter and all the apple pies and crumbles we could eat.

Modern recipes for apple pies are far too fancy for my liking, they always to make such a song and dance out of a relatively easy recipe. So I always reach for a recipe that's in one of my favorite vintage cookbooks - The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook. It's a very well loved, a little tattered and worn but essential cookbook in my collection. It has both my go to recipe for plain pastry and for apple pies (which I love playing around and adjusting). 

While this recipe is pretty simple, that doesn't mean it can't be jazzed up, I always through in a cup or two of raspberries into each pie and I'm sure brambles or raisins would taste just as good too. But this recipe is to much of my favorite to not share again (with some adjustments from the last time it was posted).

Old good fashioned apple pie

6 medium apples - eating or cooking
2 cups of raspberries
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of all spice
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 tablespoon of butter
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
Milk

Line bottom of your pie tin with pastry and cut off any excess pastry from around the edges. Peel, core and cute apples into small bite sized pieces and mix in the raspberries. Dump them both into your pastry lined pie tin. Separately mix the sugar, cinnamon, all spice salt and lemon juice together and sprinkle over your apple/raspberry mix. Cut up your tablespoon of butter and dot it around the top.

Wet the edges of your pie and roll out/take your pie top and lay over, covering the pie. Press the edges together. Cut a little vent in the top of the pie and glaze with a little bit of milk so the crust goes lovely and golden.

Bake at 450F on the lowest shelf for 10 minutes then reduce to 350F for 45 - 60 minutes on the middle shelf.

Going by how many apples we still have left, this recipe will be getting used for many more pies in the next month or so. It's that good and never lasts long around here.

But the big, all important question is, what do you serve your apple pie with? Custard, cream, ice cream?

LIFE: 30 Before 30

On the eve of my tenth birthday I remember walking home, wondering if life would be any different with my age in double figures. Waking up the next day and taking the walk to school, I realized everything remained the same. Ten year old me probably imagined I would feel different turning 28 with all the responsibility being 28 entails - things a ten year old probably couldn't really comprehend. Now that I'm 28, yeah nothing has really changed.

In a little under two years, I turn the big 3.0. The least said about this is probably for the better. But at least Joe reaches that dizzy height in little over 6 months so he can tell me how scary it actually is. Anyway, I thought I'd jump on the old *insert number here* before *insert age number here* wagon and have myself do some challenges.

And I actually came up with 30 of them;

1. do a 365 photo challenge
2. visit falling waters (pa)
3. decorate the bathroom 
4. establish a butterfly garden
5. read 101 books I've never read before while doing my yearly goodreads challenge
6. complete a blog every day for a month challenge
7. get my own blog url and prob change the blog name again 
8. strip wood paneling from the back room
9. reach 1000 blog readers 
10. learn to drive
11. visit the motown museum 
12. read gone with the wind
13. get business cards (for blog and/or store)
14. visit cedar point (oh) 
15. learn to knit 
16. try 10 new (to me) whiskeys
17. visit canada 
18. get another tattoo
19. bake something using pumpkin
20. get the house wallpaper free
21. grow and eat something from my veg patch 
22. embrace a more organic/green eating, products and lifestyle 
23. try at least one new recipe a month
24. crochet a new blanket 
25. add 10 new pieces to my embroidery hoop wall
26. put up a bat box
27. make a wreath 
28. add 20 vintage powder compacts to my collection
29. successfully grow a plant from a cutting 
30. work on self confidence // self love

None of them are out of the way things, hopefully things I'd be achieving anyway, this is just a way to remember what I want to have achieved by then. I want my list to be realists (like no "visit 5 countries" because lets face it, I don't have the money to do that).

Two weeks into life as a 28 year old, I'm already still on task with my photo a day challenge (basically disguised in my instagram uploads), I have a plant growing from a cutting (yey), I've read one new book (The Lodger) and tried three new recipes this month (including the raspberry cake - my late birthday cake) already.

No doubt I'll be blogging about them over the next coming two years and I'll actually get around to ticking off a few of them!

 

TRAVEL: Dear Michigan

Oh Michigan, you funny little state you. You are a piece of land where your populace describes where they live using their hands. Where you can live happily in the thumb and the UP is more than a direction. It's a state of odd sounding and weirdly spelled place and road names, of Mackinaw, Mackinac, Ypsilanti to Dequindre and Schonherr. You know it's a place you call home when A2 makes sense as a city name, people argue over where "up north" actually begins, and you know that Hell freezes over when winter rolls around and it's down the street.

Source

Of course you like to trick outsiders when calling liquor stores a party store but those are for insider giggles. Just like calling soda, pop and Vernor's ginger ale sits in our cupboards for both beverage and medicinal reasons. Call Michigan home and you know the difference between a coney and a chili dog, where people queue for hours for a paczki when pancake day rolls round and you prefer a coffee from Biggby over Starbucks any day of the week.

Harbor Springs

It's a land where road trips can be undertaken in the fall just as an excuse to see the changing tree colours and what a beautiful sight they are. Summertime can be spent along the coastline, a state with the most lighthouses (116 of them) in America, with grand sand dunes, clear waters and national forests. Yet any trip probably involves many a Michigan left and avoiding all those potholes our state seems to pride itself in and the elected don't want to agree to fix. Only the winter brings relief in filling said potholes for those chilly months with snow. Only for them to be even worse when spring rolls around.

The Michigan Left (source)

Michigan, you are a state which pits Detroit against everyone else, Detroit is the states downfall, it's Detroit against the lawmakers, Detroit against it's own suburbs, Detroit against Michigan. And even if your not a huge sports fan, it's always Michigan verses Ohio. Ohio you can thank us later for those algae blooms as we thank you for being close enough for Yuengling supply trips.

That's not to say you're all a jolly state dear MI. I always wonder how a state can go from being so darn cold to being so humid months later. Your politics could do with working on, and well actually getting things ya know, done. Lets face it those roads won't fix themselves. Plus lets not forget the underlying racism, sexism and homophobia that still hangs around.  

Mackiac Bridge

Empty your pockets and you'll find just as much Canadian coinage as American but you may never stepped over the boarder. But leave the state and the Pure Michigan signs welcome you back like you never left.

You may have been the state were pop/soda was invented, the home of the first traffic light, state-fair and typewriter. It's the only place in the world with a floating post office (yes really - it even has it's own zip code), singing sand, the worlds largest tire, crucifix and weather vane. Home of the automobile and Motown, well Michigan, you don't like to brag about any of it really. 

Forty Mile Point, Rogers City

Your beauty and places rarely feature on anyone's bucket list. Your cities and Midwest rust belt towns might not attract the thrill seeking tourists, those which crave New York City or Disney who never travel to find the real America outside the bright lights.

Yet that gives us, those that call Michigan home the excuse to keep it's beauty our little secret.

LIFE: #PhotoAnHour on an October Day

Thanks to a lovely reminder from Louisa, I've managed to take part in another #PhotoAnHour tag along. Like the month previous, it happened to be on another Saturday that we took off from hitting estate sales. Still I took the time to get my hands dirty in the garden and enjoy a bit of a work break. Having just signed up for instagram a little over a week ago, I've been messing around with camera/photograph apps. I had been trying out snapseed but their filters just seem a little too dramatic. So all of these use VSCO filters which I'm preferring, mind you I should probably just stick to one filter to make them all feel samey. 

10 am // lie ins on a Saturday morning are typically rare, so I think my body was rather ready for one with the result of sleeping pretty much through until 10 am. A bright sunny autumnal morning was already in full swing as the view through my kitchen blinds shows you. 

11 am // after spending most of Thursday and Friday trying to work out that band "that sounded like the editors, circa 2005 but not as miserable" I finally remembered it was the departure and needed to get my fix. I was working in the garden and my trusty samsung mp3 (or maybe mp4 I donno) player (which is probably as old as the album - I think I had it at uni) always comes outside with me. Anyway, my love for 2005 British indie rock still runs deep. 

12 pm // One of my big jobs in the garden was a bit of a weeding session - I actually hate weeding. It's as bad as folding the laundry after doing a wash. But it's one of those things that needs to be done. Garden looks all the nicer for it too mind.

1 pm // A hungry stomach calls so a quick break of a cheese toastie and playing one of our favorite bands - Clairy Browne and the Bangin' Racketts.



2 pm // Time to tidy up - one full bin and one full bag of garden waste for the city to take away come Monday. (hey look at me being grown up with a garage too). Hmm so what did I get up to in the garden bar weeding I can hear you ask. Well I stuck in some more border edging, made a border somewhere else, dug up, separated and transplanted some grasses around and did some pruning. I like to pretend to know what i'm talking about ... i'm just making up this gardening lark as I go along.

3 pm // Having a much needed brew out of my Star Trek mug and having a quick read - a book I actually won via Goodreads advanced book giveaways. The Bones of Paris is a thriller set in late 1920's (you guessed it) Paris and while i've only just started it, so far so good.

4 pm // traveling north on the freeway heading to the postie office. We might have moved five miles south and to another city but we still drive to the same post office mainly for the self service machines (which actually seem to confuse so many people). Anyways, gorgeous blue skies on the old i-75. Actually this is the bridge that the HUGE puddle was around this August that you might remember from my great flood post. Luckily it was dry today because I don't own a boat.

5 pm // getting online, poking tweetdeck, watching Captain Piccard in Star Trek TNG on BBC America. For some reason our TV looks really small, it's not and excuse my messy coffee table.

6 pm // Simmering up a chicken tomato (and onion, always gotta throw in onion) balti curry. I can't say i've made this recipe before and it turned out rather tasty if I do say so myself. All homemade too, it's a bit of a thing of mine.

7 pm // Finding things i'd forgotten about under the coffee table. The Beatrix Potter Alphabet cross stitch chart was a find at an estate sale a good couple (or even more) weeks ago. Eventually i'll get around to stitching one (or two ... or more) of them. They are too cute not too.

So there you have it, the rest of the night was spent watching more TNG until Dr Who came on and pretty much writing up this post and catching up on some blog reading.

If you're interested in tagging along next time make sure to follow Jane on either twitter or via her blog for the next #photoanhour date.

So tell me, how was your weekend?

LIFE: Misconceptions About Expat Life

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about what has an expat entails especially on the long term day to day basis. These misconceptions can often find their way onto the blogsphere or articles which can often lead people to always thinking life is always a certain way. But I don't really like or have time for sugar coating life in general, so here are some of the myths I hear and see about life as, and about being an expat.

We're constantly traveling

And that we have the money to be constantly traveling around the new country we call home. nope. now some people might have the money, but sadly I have a mortgage and bills to pay, we have jobs, I still have to go food shopping, i have obligations and i don't have the money to be jet setting around every state. so no, life as an expat isn't one long holiday. 

It's one big adventure

I've mentioned many times that while yes, living aboard in a new country is pretty awesome what with all the new places to eat and places to go. It comes at a price, there's the guilt, fears as an expat, homesickness, those you leave behind, not fitting in. it's not all fun and games we actually have to live and work.

The grass is always greener

the US has some awesome things going for it - prices tend to be lower, all the places to visit but there's things that I prefer doing and being done in the British way. There are British things I miss, the NHS, attitudes to certain things. people would have you think everything was better, the only way to do things in your new country, it's not often the case. The grass is just another shade of green, that's all.

It's "easy" if you move to a country that speaks your language

to a point, yes I would agree. but local ways of saying things (you'll find some great other regional words here) particular ways, cultural appropriation of certain words and their meaning can be a battle field. let's not mention all the cultural differences that I experience between the UK and the US - the role of politics, religion, the difference in healthcare, women's rights, working. the list is endless. speaking the language is a start, but culture as a whole is a minefield. 

Are you an expat - what misconceptions annoy you? Or if you're not, how to you think us expats live?

FOOD: Raspberry Cake

With a freezer full of raspberries, it was high time I took to doing something wit them and with the need to find a recipe for a birthday cake for myself, what better an opportunity to use some of them up. You'd think raspberry cakes recipes would be easy to find, but apparently such cakes are a modern invention. While I love using my vintage cookbooks, none had any such recipe, for once pinterest came to the rescue. 

The recipe I came across from Food Loverr which is actually adapted from one on food.com is pretty straight forward, and like most of the recipes I come to share here, there's no out of the ordinary ingredients required. I found the bake time was very underestimated and after baking with frozen raspberries, i'd suggest using fresh ones. The icing was also meant to be decorated with raspberries, but I misjudged and didn't have enough - oops. 

Raspberry Cake

Cake

1/3 cup of butter

1 cup of sugar

1 egg

3 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 cups of sifted all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 cups of fresh raspberries 

Glaze

1 1/2 cups powdered/confectionery sugar

1 teaspoon of melted butter 

6 tablespoons of heavy cream

Mix the butter and sugar together, adding in the egg and mix well. Combine all the dry ingredients. Separately add the vanilla extract to the milk and add, alternating with the dry ingredients into the butter/sugar mixture and mix well, until smooth. Pour batter into a lined loaf pan and sprinkle raspberries over the batter. Place into a preheated oven at 375F for 45 minutes (original recipe states 30 - but the batter was far too wet). After the cake has baked, make the glaze by mixing all the ingredients - sugar, melted butter and cream and frost while still slightly warm.

Have you baked anything tasty lately?

SNAPSHOTS: A Weekend in Early October

This weekend has been all about burgers, bunch and possibly far too many photographs. Having finally got more of a modern contraption of a phone, I've finally moved to the darkside and started an instagram account (found here) - which has given me a great excuse for sharing even more photographs and will hopefully help in one of my 30 before 30 challenges (more of this to come) of trying to complete a full 365 photo tasks covering my year of being 28, starting October 1st. With Joe's mum popping up from Pittsburgh, we always love using their trips as a great chance to explore some more of Detroit and it's areas great places to eat and catch up. 

As it happens instagram is turning into my place to dump flower photographs and pictures of random places we drive pass, because that's basically summing up my life. My dahlia bulbs are in the oh look at me i'm so pretty flowering stage, they are so beautiful it would be hard not to want to take so many photographs of them on a daily basis (again, more photographs will follow). Saturday's late lunch was at the Mercury Bar down in Corktown - which we both agreed is our new favorite place for burgers - and to boot has a great collection of Michigan beers. Like Slows, the Mercury Bar is in the shadow of the Michigan Central Station which is always an obligatory thing to photograph whatever your position of the building (or even it's owner).

Heading home we drove along Michigan Avenue back from Corktown into downtown with moody grey clouds overhead but a blinding autumnal sun reflecting off all the skyscrapers. 

What's a better way to start a Sunday with a cocktail - cucumber and raspberry with some some tasty brunch served up at the Emroy in Ferndale. They also have a huge bloody mary bar which seems to be all the rage around here, and well, I certainly could get use to the brunch lark that's for sure. Our local fire station was having it's open day so I wandered down to have a nosey.

But this weekend one the whole, i'd say autumn hit like a thump. Chilly mornings and chilly days means perfect chance to get wrapped up in cardigans and scarves and admire the ever increasing golden of leaves in the trees. I always love the contrast between the golds, the reds and just how blue those autumn (however misleading they are about how "warm" they look) skies appear. But it's cold nonetheless, which doesn't help when our furnace gave up the ghost (or replace with technical words that I don't know) and we have no heat - sucks.

So if you'd love to follow more of my random every day photographs then you can always add me on instagram.